
Class 
Book. 






Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT- 



MANDRAGORA 



BOOKS BY JOHN COWPER POWYS 



The War and Culture, 1914 . . 
Visions and Revisions, Essays 1915 
Wood and Stone, a Romance, 19 15 

Confessions, 19 16 

Wolf's-bane, Rhymes, 1916 . . . 
One Hundred Best Books, 19 16 . 
Rodmoor, a Romance, 191 6 . . . 
Suspended Judgments, Essays, 19 16 



$ .60 
2.00 
1.75 
1.50 
1.25 

•75 
1.50 
2.00 



Published by G. ARNOLD ;SHAW 

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK 



MANDRAGORA 

POEMS 



BY 



JOHN COWPER POWYS 



" Give me to drink Mandragora — " 

Antony and Cleopatra. 




1917 

G. ARNOLD SHAW 

NEW YORK 



<tf 



*V 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
G. ARNOLD SHAW 



Copyright in Great Britain and the Colonies 



SEP 29 1917 

©CU473759 
> U • ' , 



DEDICATED 

TO 

MARIAN POWYS 

Oh lace-maker, what joys, what fears 

Do you weave into your thread? 
What sorcery from the far-off years 

Hovers above your head? 
Your flickering fingers are dipped deep 

In the magic-flowing stream. 
Is there a sleep beneath this sleep 

And a dream beyond this dream? 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Flute-player i 

The Cup 3 

The Vigil 4 

Her Love 5 

Wayfarers 7 

Episode 9 

Invocation 10 

The Writer n 

Blasphemy 12 

The Flower 13 

Veni Creator Spiritus 15 

The Blood 17 

The Wind 10 

Escape 20 

The Old Cry 21 

Waiting 22 

A Face 23 

The Sea-bird 24 

At the End of the World 25 

Night 2 6 

The Daughter of the Sphinx 27 

The Little Flame 28 

The River 29 

Ave Maria 30 

The Recluse 32 

The Leaves 33 

In the Night 34 

Requiem ?c 

The Traitor 36 

The Tears 37 

Spring 38 



VIII CONTENTS 



PAGE 

A Look 39 

The Horizon 40 

Demeter Consolatrix 42 

The Golden Cup 43 

The Poplar-leaves 44 

The Mist 45 

Optimism 46 

The Appeal 47 

God 49 

Persephone 50 

The Visitor 51 

War 52 

To Lulu 54 

The Oracle 55 

They Say 56 

Over 57 

The Willow-seeds 59 

Reversion 60 

For Once 61 

The Saturnian 63 

The Hour 65 

Obsequies 65 

Accusation 66 

The Monk 67 

Deserted 69 

Remorse 70 

To Isadora Duncan 71 

Travellers 72 

The Dance 74 

Twilight 75 

The Tune 76 

Reaction 77 

Saturn 78 

The Shoes 83 

Eternity 84 

The Mask 85 



CONTENTS IX 



PAGE 

What We Sav 86 

"Be Hard!" 88 

Many Waters - 90 

The Bassarid 91 

The Cry 93 

Renewal 94 

Understanding 96 

There It Is! 97 

Pax Vobiscum 98 

The Lane 99 

Condemned 100 

The Rose-leaves 102 

The Exile 104 

Mortmain 105 

First and Last 106 

Piety 107 

Evasion 108 

The Gods 109 

The Water ' 1 1 1 

The Rose 112 

The Wood 113 

The Book 115 

Supreme Unction 116 

A Question 117 

Euthanasia 118 

A Farewell 120 

The Garden 122 

Nunc Dimittis 124 

Moments 124 

Noon 125 

Lost 127 

Obsession 128 

Exiles 129 

Memory 130 

Nothing 13 1 

Whiteness 13 2 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Silence 133 

Finis 134 

The Grave 135 

The Return 137 

The Ship 138 



MANDRAGORA 



MANDRAGORA 



THE FLUTE-PLAYER 

ONCE I saw her. 'Twas long ago; 
From the bridge of a dream-city. 
Drops of rain were falling slow. 
It was autumn and long ago; 
And somewhere in the fields below 
A flute-player played this ditty — 

One look and never the same again 

Are the roses on the wall; 

One look and forever the midnight rain 

With a different sound must fall. 

Gables and gardens, roofs and towers, 

Hung vague and rich and dim. 

From somewhere there came a scent of flowers, 

And a wind from the world's rim; 

And the sun sank red behind the towers, 

And she stood and looked at him. 

She looked at him from a closed window, 
Then at me did she look down. 



THE FLUTE-PLAYER 



It was autumn and very long ago, 

And drops of rain kept falling slow 

And a flute-player played on his flute below, 

From the fields below the town. 

And now they have told me so constantly 

That the place was a city of dreams, 

That my reason believes it; but in my heart, 

In my heart most real it seems! 

And thro' town and country I still must go 

The shadowy roads along, 

Seeing always that closed window 

And hearing that flute-player's song. 

And when the sun most rich and dim 

Sinks down behind dark towers, 

And there comes a wind from the world's rim 

And from somewhere a scent of flowers — 

I stand again on the bridge of that city 

And hear that flute-player; 

And my Love looks down on me in pity, 

And I look back at her. 

— One look and never the same again 
Are the roses on the wall; 
One look and forever the midnight rain 
With a different sound must fall! 



THE CUP 



THE CUP 

AH, be satisfied, my dear; 
There is none but you 
Who can hold me from the fair, 
Brimming, glimmering, lovely, rare 
Cup of exquisite despair, 
Cup of black basalt — 
Salter than the sea is salt, 
Older than the sea is old, 
Fuller than the sea is full! 
I have cried, "How beautiful 
Is that cup!" have wept and cried, 
"It is full of heavenly dew!" 
Ah, my dear, be satisfied; 
There is none but you. 



THE VIGIL 



THE VIGIL 

LET the huge stars roll on! 
My vigil's kept. 
Love lies his grave upon — 

What is there left? 
I swore to guard the shrine 

Where the bright candles shine. 
Bread is bread, wine is wine. 

Darkness on all be poured! 
The altar has no God. 

Let the huge stars roll on 

Space beyond space! 
Love was; and love is gone. 

Cover his face! 
Let the great gulfs abhorred 

Take it, my flaming sword, 

Deep below deep! 
Hail, thou that wast my Lord, 
I have kept watch and ward — 

Now I can sleep. 



HER LOVE 



HER LOVE 

I TOOK the love you threw away 
When the moon was full; 
When in the river the full moon lay 
And the river-reeds were hushed in their play 

And gave their souls to the moon, 
And whispered and cried, "Ah, well-away! 
Today must turn into yesterday 
And the moon must wither and fade away, 
The beautiful full moon!" 

I took the love that you had scorned, 
Where it lay in that cold reed-bed, 

Took it when the morning dawned, 
Making the river red. 

"Behold, in spite of her bitter scorn, 

In spite of the blood spilt by the dawn, 
That love is mine," I said. 

And now when the moon is old 
And the sun, all burning gold, 

Scorches the city street; 
Now when the river is dried 
And the reeds have drooped and died, 

Your love is a fountain sweet; 



HER LOVE 

A fountain and a cup! 

And the wretchedest and the worst 
Bless God as they drink it up, 

For it quenches their deepest thirst. 
And the air of the hottest day 

Grows cool and beautiful, 
Because of the love you threw away 

When the moon was full. 



WAYFARERS 



WAYFARERS 

THE wind is very cold! 
Does it blow from the ultimate sea, 
Or over cities sad and old, 
Lost beyond memory?" 
So cried my heart to my soul, 

As it shivered by its side; 
But "Follow the wind — follow the wind!" 
My soul replied. 

And the wind led them on and on, 

Till they came to the city of Dis; 
"Here shall we rest!" my poor heart cried, 

"Here shall we find our bliss; 
Behold, this is great Babylon! 

The Heart's Desire is this!" 
And it blessed itself and blessed my soul 

With a wicked heathen kiss. 
So cried my heart to my soul, 

As it shivered by its side, 
But "Follow the wind — follow the wind!" 

My soul replied. 

And the wind led them on and on, 

Till they came to the city of God. 

"Here shall we rest!" my poor heart cried, 
And tears of blood it poured. 

"On these streets shine the sun and the moon: 
The City of God is this!" 



8 WAYFARERS 

And it blessed itself and blessed my soul 

With a most holy kiss. 
So cried my heart to my soul, 

As it shivered by its side. 
But "Follow the wind — follow the wind!" 

My soul replied. 

And the wind led them on and on 

Till they came to the City of Dreams, 
To the place where the king called "Might- 
have-been" 

Dwelleth with "Never-to-be," his queen, 

And all is as it seems. 
"Here shall we rest!" my poor heart cried, 

"The City of Dreams is this." 
And it blessed itself and blessed my soul 

With a wistful and weeping kiss. 
So cried my heart to my soul, 

As it shivered by its side. 
But "Follow the wind — follow the wind!" 

My soul replied. 

And still they follow and follow, 

Beyond each ultimate shore; 
And Aldebaran shines behind them 
And Arcturus shines before. 
And when my poor heart murmurs, 

"When we left those gates we sinned!" 
My soul thro' the darkness answers her — 
"Follow the wind!" 



EPISODE 



EPISODE 

SO now that all is over, 
And it does not greatly matter 
How long the same roof cover 

The hope that perished there, 
The fleeting hour to flatter. 

Now that it all is over, 
Forget the sad word lover, 
And breathe — the air, the air! 

Lean down and watch the river 

Flow fast beneath our bridge; 
Watch the faint grasses quiver 

On the familiar ridge. 
If all were well there would be 

No difference in the dew, 
Nor in different fashion could we 

Catch the horizon's clue. 

A sign, a symbol captured 

From the eternal flow! 
Stood we by love enraptured, 

What more could either know? 
Nothing! Between us ever 

The old unfathomed sea, 
Not less than now would shiver 

With its bitter mystery. 



10 INVOCATION 

So now that all is over, 

Let the great stars emerge, 
Placid and calm, and cover 

The sky from verge to verge I 
The deep and flowing magic 

Of the universe is such, 
Comic be it, or tragic, 

It does not matter much! 



INVOCATION 

WHO will waken the wind for me? 
Who will waken the wind? 
The night is loaded with misery; 
And like one stricken with leprosy 

The moon has sunk in the sea. 
The earth is heavy as if it had sinned; 
Like a ghost stands every tree. 

Who will waken the wind for me? 
Who will waken the wind? 



THEWRITER II 



THE WRITER 

IN the shade of the pyramids 
I knelt and wrote on the sand, 
While with softly drooping, veiled lids, 
You watched in the shade of those pyramids 
The movements of my hand. 

I wrote of the fall of Troy, 

I wrote of the Grecian ships, 
I wrote of Adonis the lovely boy, 
And of winged Psyche's virgin joy 

As she clung to Eros' lips. 

I wrote of the Syrian pearls, 

Of Herod, the Jewish king. 
I wrote of Salome's tossing curls 
And the pale lips sweeter than any girl's, 

Of her blood-stained offering. 

But all the while you kept, 

Dark-lowered your veiled lids. 
You neither laughed nor murmured nor wept; 
A watcher would surely have dreamed you slept 

In the shade of those pyramids. 

But when I wrote in the sand 

A little unlegended name, 

A human unhistoried name, 
With a bitter cry and uplifted hand 
You rose and over that famished land, 

Fled away like a flame. 



12 BLASPHEMY 



BLASPHEMY 

FAIRY form, O flower-like face, 
O piteous tender breast, 
Why did you come with your childish grace 
And trouble my heart's rest? 

The tide, my darling, is bitter and deep 

That washes that cruel shore. 
The happy lovers are those that sleep 

And love not any more. 

Calm filmy dreams thro' each tired head 

Flow softly, mingle and flow. 
The happy lovers are those that are dead, 

That died full long ago. 

child, forgive me; I lie, I lie 
With an evil blasphemy! 

1 lie to the clouds in the air above! 
I lie to the earth and the sea! 

The living, the living must worship love! 
The dead, the dead must be. 



THE FLOWER 13 



THE FLOWER 

I COULD not see at that hour, 
I tell you, I could not seel 
The face of the night was wet 
And there was rain on the wind. 
Oh, misery — oh, regret! 
Blind! Blind! Blind! Blind! 
I tell you, I could not see. 
There was too much rain on the wind 
When I stooped and picked that flower. 

I hold it now in my hand, 

As the moon thro' the branches peers, 

Wickedly, wantonly peers. 
But now it is too late, 
And its petals desolate 

Droop and lose their power, 

And I see that this murdered flower 
Would have changed the course of my fate. 

And now, oh wanton moon, 

As you flicker thro' boughs where the rains 
Drip to a fitful tune, 

I see on that flower the veins 
Of a delicate-pencilled rune, 

A hope that no longer remains. 



14 THEFLOWER 

Oh moon! if only it grew 

Still living, still tender and free, 
Oh wanton moon, I would laugh at you; 

Nor bitterly wander the forest thro', 
While the rain drips sadly from tree to tree, 

Cursing the cause of my misery, 

The blindness — the blindness — that ruined me! 



VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS 1 5 



VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS 

MY strength is shifting sand; the waters 
Of jealousy meet over my head; 
I am scorned and scourged by Satan's daughters; 

And crucified on a salt sea bed. 
I have prayed to the gods. Oh, little the use! 
Thou, greater than God, descend on me. 
Thou breath of the deep world, set me free. 
Blow from your primal eternity. 
Veni Creator Spiritus! 

My strength is trodden dust. The claw 

Of envy tears me day and night, 
And the tawny lion of "Nevermore" 

Eats my heart for his delight. 
Oh, calm cool breath, your floodgates loose! 

Oh, breath of the deep world, set me free. 

Oh, greater than God, descend on me. 

Blow from your primal eternity. 
Veni Creator Spiritus! 

My strength is the dregs of poured-out wine. 

The dry ground drinks me. The poison-flower 
Grows fat with me. The root malign 

Of the night-shade waits its baleful hour. 
Life is too bitter. "I could not choose 

But weep to see another thus." 

O breath from beyond the land and sea, 

O calm and cool eternity. 

Veni Creator Spiritus! 



l6 VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS 

My strength is smouldering ashes. The molten 
stream 

Of love consumes me; all day and night I waste 
Burning from fever-dream to fever-dream, 

My parched mouth full of the dead-sea taste. 
O air, O breath, give what the gods refuse! 

O depths beyond all depths, have pity on me! 

O space beyond all spaces, set me free. 

Blow from your calm and cool eternity. 
Veni Creator Spiritus! 



THEBLOOD 17 



THE BLOOD 

I FOUND bright drops of purple blood 
Beside a dying faun. 
A mushroom-cup had caught that flood 
From the brown body torn. 

I took the blood and went apart 

With her whose love I killed. 
"Take this and fill with it your heart, 

In place of what I spilled!" 

She looked at me out of her pain — 

Sweet saints, on my death-bed 
Let me not see that look again! 

Then lightly, lightly she said — 

"I take that blood. When we shall meet," 
And she gave me her mouth to kiss — 

"At the White Christ's golden judgment seat, 
I will lie to him of this. 

"I will lie to him, the great White Christ, 

About the love you killed. 
I will say the brown faun's blood sufficed 

In place of what you spilled." 

Softly she turned and left me there, 
And I was left alone; 



THE BLOOD 



And her voice came faintly upon the air, 
"A faun's blood shall atone!" 

But from where she left me I did not move, 

And never yet have moved. 
For I am he that murdered love, 

And yet am I not loved? 



T H E W I N D 19 



THE WIND 

THE night is sobbing and crying with rain, 
And the wind is drifting among the trees; 
Drifting and whispering to me again 
Of the memories — of the memories! 

Like a phantom sea is the drifting wind; 

Flowing towards us, ebbing apart; 
The merciless wind without a heart! 

Like a phantom sea is the drifting wind. 

And my memories tear me away from you; 

And your memories tear you away from me; 
While the wind goes wailing between us two, 

The drifting wind, like a phantom sea. 

Oh hollow spaces, oh midnight springs! 

Oh deep night- valleys wet with the rain! 
Lure, lure this wind to fold up its wings 

And bury our memories again! 

Then I would forget, and you would forget; 

And beneath the sleeping wind 
We would pray to the darkness, and watch regret 
Drift away o'er the pastures wet, 

Till silence healed our mind. 



20 ESCAPE 



ESCAPE 

DEEP pools there are, pools quiet and still, 
Far off, where none of them guess; 
Beyond the peaks of the world's last hill 

And the desert's loneliness. 
But all about the edge of those pools 
Flutter like troubled birds, 
The little gestures you used to use, 

And your light, forgotten words. 
And when the moon from the purple sky 
Makes signs to the silent grass, 
Those pools grow charged with your memory, 

And I see your image pass. 
I see you not as you really are, 
But pale as the lately dead, 
With a faint marsh-flame like a fallen star 

Flickering above your head. 

wild white cheeks, O scarlet mouth! 
Is my heart's deep whisper true 

That beyond the peaks of the world's last hill, 

1 can flee the human race at my will 
And yet cannot escape from you? 



THE OLD CRY 21 



THE OLD CRY 

IF only ages ago 
I had buried my restless heart 
Under mountains of snow 
In a lonely place apart, 
I could bring it now to her, 
Locked with a silver key; 
And its shadowy pearls would never stir 
From that sweet sanctuary. 

Oh wind that wafted my boat 

To the isles where the Sirens sing, 
Somewhere — washed up upon sands remote 

Those pearls lie glittering. 
Gather them, gather them up, 

Oh wind, and bring them to me 
In a misty foam-wreathed cup — 

The pearls that I lost in the sea. 

Dim with the salt are they, 

Blurred and bleached with the sun; 
But, gathered from far away, 

Bring them back, every one; 
That Iain once more at rest 

Where her heart beats and feels, 
They may sleep forever against her breast, 

Sealed with a thousand seals! 



22 WAITING 



WAITING 

THE flowerless weeds along the tangled hedge 
Listen and wait. 
The willow-bushes by the water's edge 

Listen and wait. 
Under the earth I feel the roots of trees 

Listening, waiting. 
Oh Earth, oh Sky, oh secret hope of these! 
Is it worth waiting? 

So sinks my heart's faint whisper hopelessly, 

Sinks and is gone; 
While the round earth sweeps weeds and willows 
and me 

Carelessly on; 
And morning becomes noon, noon becomes night 

In the same doubt. 
No answer, not a word; till one by one 

The stars come out. 

And then — but not from them, for they too wait, 
Ah, they wait too, the stars! — but from the night, 
The night itself, oldest of all the gods, 

The answer! 
And all the flowerless weeds and the willows and I 
Listen — hear nothing — yet are satisfied. 
Portions of that Night we know ourselves to be; 
Children of the oldest of all the gods are we, 
And from ourselves we hide our own hearts' 
mystery ! 



A F A C E 23 



A FACE 



IF I could only pass 
Into that ultimate later time 

Where the solemn planets cease to climb, 
And one unruffled sea of glass 

Breaks on the sand with monotonous fall, 

Calls to the land with continuous call, 
Breaks and ebbs and flows and drifts, 
While its endless motion lifts 

The grey-cold tops of unearthly reeds 
And marge to desolate marge succeeds, 

With never the trunk of a single tree; 
If I could only see 

The face of the wind in that ultimate place, 
I think it would be less heavy with dreams, 

Less heavy with dreams of sea-weeds drifting, 

Less heavy with dreams of reed-tops lifting, 

Than the human face of one I know! 
If I could only go 

Into that passionless later time 
Where long sea-memories rock like rhyme, 

And the sun and moon forever set, 

Tinge all with eternal violet, 
The face of the wind in that ultimate spot 

Where all is equal and nothing forgot, 
Would have the look of a face I know 
Or dreamed long ago that I know — 

Heavy with joy — heavy with woe! 



24 THESEA-BIRD 



THE SEA-BIRD 

YOU saw my heart as it lay- 
Like a hushed rock-pool, aside 
From the ocean's wind-tossed spray, 
And you were hurt in your pride. 

And the wild sea-bird in you 

Rose and spread out its wings, 
And flapping down over cliff and ledge, 
Lighted upon that rock-pool's edge 

And troubled it thro' and thro'. 

And now that its depths are dim 
And heavy and blurred and blind, 

Over the purple waves you skim 

And bathe in the sun and make sport for him, 
And give yourself to the wind. 

A flashing meteor of pearl, 

You laugh and waver and dart — 
In silver circles you gleam and whirl, 
A rainbow, a sea-bird, a demon — a girl 
Who has flown across a heart. 



AT THE END OF THE WORLD 25 



AT THE END OF THE WORLD 

THE patient earth, the breathless trees, 
Have listened here for centuries, 
Have listened under the silver moon 
To this little streamlet's flowing, 
Hearing nothing in its going 

Save its own enchanted tune. 

Oh, how silent on moss and stone 

Sleeps the whole world's bitter wrong! 

While the shadow of love, lying alone, 
Listens to the streamlet's song. 

At the end of the world this place might be! 

So hushed are the shadows, so hushed the grass; 
So hushed are the hemlocks of mystery, 

Waiting for feet that never pass! 

Listen! A voice out of the night! 

A voice from the silence — a passionate cry — 
Beautiful, terrible, infinite! 

The voice of a god who comes to die. 

And the patient earth and the breathless trees 
Turn to that voice; and the listening air 

Yearns to it, thro' the immensities, 
As tho' God Himself were dying there. 



26 NIGHT 

Only the little streamlet flows 

Beneath the hemlocks, beneath the moon; 
Hearing nothing as it goes, 

Save its own enchanted tune. 

And silent, silent, on moss and stone, 
Sleeps the whole world's bitter wrong; 

While the shadow of love, lying alone, 
Listens to the streamlet's song. 



NIGHT 

ALONE again! And the silence flows 
Round the windows of this place. 
The night is starless and heavy and close, 
Rain-scented like a drooping rose; 
And on the night floats your face. 

It does not smile, it does not frown, 
It does not laugh, it does not weep; 
It only rocks itself up and down, 
Floating, as if on the waves of sleep. 

Like a drooping rose is your dreamy face 
With the starless night about it furled; 
And infinite silence fills the place, 
And there is nothing else in the world. 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE SPHINX 2J 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE SPHINX 

MY mind is a plain with blackened stalks 
And the crumbling stones of a buried city, 
Where hooded desolation walks, 
And all alone in an empty sky 
A solitary kite sails by. 
But yet, because of the sudden pity 
Of the youngest daughter of the sphinx, 
Great Ammon on my burden winks 
And I have found — ah, none too soon! 
A little pallid petalled flower, 
Hid in the dust of a fallen tower, 
With a phantom lustre like the moon; 
And now I can watch the kite sail by, 
And the long, long shadows among the stones, 
And the blackened stalks and the empty sky, 
And the wind-blown dust of ancient bones, 
With strange exultant serenity, 
And across that plain which is my soul, 
Soft incense-clouds of healing roll 
With balm, and the breath of a whispered spell, 
And an opiate-rain ineffable, 
For on him whose mind is scarred deep, 
With secrets sad as the dead who sleep, 
On him whose soul is a buried city, 
The daughter of the sphinx has pity. 



28 THE LITTLE FLAME 



THE LITTLE FLAME 

TRAMPLE it fiercely down, 
It will not burn your feet. 
The little flame that your savage frown 

Hated as it went up and down, 
Because it had no heat. 

Trample it in the dust! 

It only carries in it 
The far horizon of one hope, 

One faith, one trust, one horoscope, 
Cast by one fatal minute. 

Press your heel hard on it there, 

You know it cannot burn. 
It can only answer a hurt life's prayer, 

With an ecstasy delicate as air, 
That you have yet to learn. 

Look! It still licks the ground. 

Out with it! Turn it to clay! 
The wind will blow with its ancient sound, 

When that flame is buried underground 
And you have gone your way. 

No, it never had heat, 

Love sometimes shows that lack! 
But you — you have spurned beneath your feet, 

What one day, weary of wine and meat, 
In vain you'll summon back. 



THERIVER 29 



A pale flame, after your fierce sunsets! 

Yet the Spring came at its call, 
Bringing windflowers and pansies and violets, 

And the rosemary that has no regrets 
And lasts the longest of all. 

Pray, child, to the gods that when you've found 

What the heats of passion prove. 
You sob not aloud with a piteous sound, 

Over the plot of trampled ground, 
Wherein you murdered love. 



THE RIVER 

THE pallid river of regret, 
Flows thro' that empty land; 
The land you call my heart, where yet 

The poplar-trees of memory, wet 
With ancient sorrow, stand. 

And mournfully, mournfully evermore 
Thro' those trees the wind goes wailing. 

And like wreckage strewn on a lonely shore, 
Where no man dwells and nevermore 

Shall any ship come sailing. 
The dead leaves lie where they have fallen, 

Lie on the land where they have fallen, 
The land where the roots of sorrow are set, 
The land of the river of regret. 



30 AVEMARIA 



AVE MARIA 

HOLLOW spaces, large and deep, 
Flow around your quiet sleep. 
One would think your dreaming head 
Had eternity for its bed! 
Oh, how green, for all the night, 
Is the floating liquid air, 
Full of whispers, full of light, 
Vague earth murmurs everywhere! 

Listen! Did you hear that sound 
In your eyelid-drooping sleep, 
Falling thro' the listening night, 
Falling, falling? And the earth 
Melts in vaporous mist before it, 
Melts as if from very birth 
It had watched and waited for it! 
Listen! 

'Tis a petal from the moon 

From that cold and chaste moon-flower, 

Flung in languid lotus hour, 

Like a thought after a tune; 

Like a tune after a thought, 

Sweet with ecstasy unsought! 

And all other lovely things. 

Such as shadow-veined moth-wings, 

Such as shells from drifting seas, 

Such as wild anemones, 



AVEMARIA 31 



Float with it thro' hollow space, 
Dark against your white, white face, 
Float and flutter and waver now, 
Pale against your shadowy brow! 
Listen! 

Ah! You are listening deep and deep, 

And you stir at last in your quiet sleep, 

Fall the petals of the moon 

To their soft eternal tune, 

Thro' the green and hollow night, 

All transparent tender things 

From their cold creative springs 

Fall, fall down into the night, 

With a tremulous shy delight. 

Listen! 

Ave Maria! 

The heart must be pierced with a sharp sword, 

That would be the heart of the mother of God ! 



32 THE RECLUSE 



THE RECLUSE 

WHY do you live in shadows and sighs, 
'Mid waving grasses and faint, faint scents 
'Mid floating murmurs and mysteries, 
And the ghosts of roses? Arise! Go hence! 

"Go hence and wrestle beneath the sun! 

Go hence and live before you die! 
For laurels, not roses, the race is run, 

In the great arena under the sky. 

"Go hence! Or my God, the Lord of Hosts, 

Will put it into my heart to smite 
You and your roses that smell like ghosts 

Into the everlasting night!" 

"Smite on, dear heart. The eternal night 
Will cover me with shadows and sighs; 

And, like one great rose, the Infinite 
Will hide me forever from your eyes!" 



THELEAVES 33 



THE LEAVES 

THE first dead leaves of the year are down! 
Look, how pale they float, 
Under the bridge of the market-town 

By wharf and barge and boat! 
How cold the rain-drenched meadows lie, 

Heavy with mist each one! 
And the elm-trees stand how silently 
Against the horizon! 

Oh, Love, oh, Life, most strange, most blind 

Are our days beneath the sun! 
A leaf on the water; on the wind 

A feather — and all is done. 
The market-town still sleeps — Sweet Christ, 

How motionless it seems! 
As if one night of rain sufficed 

To cover it with dreams. 

Can it be only yesterday, 

On this same bridge I stood, 
And watched the red sun sink away 

Behind a fairy wood? 
The gods protect us all! So soon 

Can summer cease? So light 
Can they drift, the leaves that played love's tune? 

Can the world end in a night? 



34 IN THE NIGHT 



IN THE NIGHT 

A CRY like a child's cry lost in the rain 
Came to me out of the mist. 
I rose and answered that cry again, 

But it went sobbing over the plain 
And died into the mist. 

And where it had been came the scent of flowers 

Out of a world's distress, 
With a moan of gathered thunder-showers 

And a gasping loneliness. 

And the gods with their faces wet with crying, 

The old gods strange and wild, 
Swept out upon us across the night, 

And — oh mystery, mystery infinite! 
The gods and the weeping child and I 

Laughed and kissed in ecstasy! 



REQUIEM 35 



REQUIEM 



WHERE, oh where, should love be laid? 
Where the sigh of the heather-bell, 
To the wandering wind can tell, 
Tell too heavily, tell too well, 
How human hearts are made! 

Lift him gently from where he lies 

So pale now! 
With frozen kisses upon his eyes, 

And faded petals upon his brow. 
Carry him gently far away, 
And bury him out of the sight of day, 

Where neither sun nor rain 

Can trouble him again. 
We have killed him and love grown cold 
Is better buried under the mould. 

Where, oh where, should love be laid, 

Where the lost soul of the sea 

Moans and weeps perpetually, 
Where the cold night cries in vain 
For what cannot come again. 

Where, oh where, should love be laid? 

Where the sigh of the sea-shell, 

To the sobbing wind can tell, 
Tell too heavily, tell too well, 

How cruel-faithless, how cruel-light, 

While love lies dying in the night, 
Human hearts are made. 



36 THETRAITOR 



THE TRAITOR 

JUDAS am I, or Peter, 
Or am I only one 
Set by malicious destiny 
Between the moon and sun? 

Silver upon the land! 

Silver upon the sea! 
A world of silver in my hand — 

And my Love looking at me. 

It is not only the Lord, 

Who in the high priest's hall, 
Looks on the man who can betray, 
Till bitterly weeping, he turns away, 
Too common grows that word. 

Put out the altar-light! 

Let no wine redden the floor. 
Cover that lovely face from sight! 
Let me go forth into the night, 

And see that look no more. 

Silver upon the land! 

Silver upon the sea! 
A world of silver in my hand — 

And my Love looking at me! 



THETEARS 37 



THE TEARS 

WHERE, oh wind, do you carry the tears 
That the muffled heads are weeping, 
Under the roofs where no one hears, 
While the Lord Christ is sleeping? 

"Cold he lies in the reeds of the dawn, 

But I carry them to him there, 
Where far away from the world's scorn 

They gleam like dew on his hair. 

"The tears that are shed for loneliness 

Like pearls on his forehead rest, 
And the tears of passionate distress 

Are opals on his breast. 

"But where, oh wind, are the hopeless tears — 

The tears no comfort know — 
The tears that none but the midnight hears — 

The tears of love's deep woe? 

"Tell me, oh wind, ere you depart, 
On his white body where are they?" 

"Ah! They are in the Lord Christ's heart 
And none can take them from him away!" 



38 SPRING 



SPRING 

PAIN and spilt blood and an appalling cry- 
Turn the earth's air to poison and make 
bitter 
The bread we eat and lay across our sleep 
A quivering shadow like a gash that bleeds. 
We laugh and are ashamed as those who mock 
An open grave. 

And yet the wet stalks of the hyacinths 
Must soon, amid green spears, bear purple flowers! 
And yet, from rain-soaked earth and crumpled 

leaves, 
The yellow primrose, with a sweet swift pang, 
Must send Spring's perilous breath, sharp-shudder- 
ing 
With faint and delicate treachery, thro' our veins! 
Shall we henceforth before these hushed wood- 
things 
Stand dazed and shamed? Or shall we in strange 

mood 
Laugh weeping laughter, as those laugh who hear 
Infants make holiday upon a grave? 
Softly with pungent scent of fields fresh-ploughed 
The small soft misty rain through dripping boughs 
Washes the crumbling roots of fallen trees; 
Red-Campion droops his petals to the earth; 
While, wild and clear, from liquid rain-sweet throat, 
As though no graves covered the green earth's face, 
Bursts, as of old, the blackbird's shameless song. 



A LOOK 39 



A LOOK 

I WOULD not stop you on your way; 
I would not bind your feet; 
Or on your shining forehead lay 

One shadow of defeat. 
Go forward — if you turn, the crowd 

Might trample you with me. 
Let the flute-players play more loud 

And the dancers dance more free! 
But once before the palace gate 

Rolls back and I'm bereft — 
Turn and look on me; and if fate 

Has any pity left, 
A passing mist upon your eyes 
Will redeem every sacrifice. 



40 THEHORIZON 



THE HORIZON 

PALE trees on the horizon grow, 
Pale, faint and dim and grey — 
Can they be real trees? They flow 

Into the mist away. 
Between us the valleys are green and wide, 
But what is beyond on the other side? 

Beyond I see a wooden pier, 

Stretching into a shadowy lake, 
And a sudden cry of wild-fowl I hear 

As over the reeds their flight they take, 
Over the reeds and far away 
Beyond the trees, dim, pale and grey; 

A wooden pier — a shadowy pond, 

But what is beyond? What is beyond? 

Beyond there is a long, long road, 
Bordered by ditches dark and wide, 

Where a wayfarer with a heavy load 
Talks to the silence at his side. 

Talks to the silence and talks to the trees, 

But what is beyond, beyond all these? 

Beyond is a house with a ruined wall, 

Where the long road enters an ancient wood, 

And its rafters rot and sink and fall, 
And nothing disturbs its solitude, 



THE HORIZON 41 



Only a heron, high up in the sky, 

Cries with a melancholy cry; 

Cries to the house, to the road and the trees, 
Cries to the wayfarer passing these; 

Between us the valleys are green and wide, 

But what is beyond — on the other side? 

Pale trees on the horizon grow, 

Pale, faint and dim and grey, 
Can they be real trees? They flow 

Into the mist away! 
Beyond and beyond, and further still, 
Beyond, till we cross the world's last hill — 
So it goes. So it always will! 



42 DEMETER CONSOLATRIX 



DEMETER CONSOLATRIX 

TROUBLED heart and fevered forehead 
Ah! with calm immortal hand 
Soon the mother of all shall take you 

To a green and silent land. 
Great red lilies hushed and splendid 

Shall be lamps to light your dreams, 
And your sleep shall be attended 
By the flow of hidden streams. 

Large mild stars shall shine above you, 

Cool deep grass your bed shall be, 
With the mother of all to love you, 

You shall lose your misery. 
She shall quench your forehead's fire 

With her calm immortal hand; 
You shall have your heart's desire 

In that green and silent land. 
From the great red lilies' splendour, 

From the large mild stars shall fall 
Magic wonderful and tender, 

And the mother of all shall give you all! 



THEGOLDENCUP 43 



THE GOLDEN CUP 

LOVELY with memories surging up, 
From a fount beneath the years, 
This light spring day like a golden cup, 
Holds something deeper than tears. 

Misty and tender, beneath, above, 

The green, green sap flows sweet, 
And beyond the mountains waits my Love, 

With daisies at her feet. 

Is it I, is it I, whom love has found? 

No! No! It cannot be! 
I have lost my sense for such heavenly sound 

And my ear for such harmony. 

Who am I that such liquid and tender mist 
From the green, green trees should rise? 

Who am I to be welcomed and healed and 
kissed 
By the wonder of such skies? 

Not unto me, oh, Lord, not unto me, 

This lovely and golden day! 
Take it and scatter it abroad 

Over the land and sea! 

Let it float and flicker, this heaven-sent light, 
Where the saddest wanderers roam; 

Till the healing dews fall with the night, 
And the lost return to their home! 



44 THE POPLAR-LEAVES 



THE POPLAR-LEAVES 

WHY do they, all of them, lean one way, 
The poplar-leaves of your heart's sad tree? 

Why do they shiver and tremble so 

When the wild sea-winds have ceased to blow 

And the wild sea-swallows have flown away 

From the edge of the bitter and lonely sea? 

If I call them to me from over the hill — 
The other swallows — the swallows that fly 
O'er the cool, fresh streams of a clearer sky — ■ 

Would those leaves lean the same way still? 

Ah! they must all of them lean one way 

Whatever wind the other follows, 

However swiftly fly the swallows; 
For the sea-born can only the sea obey. 

But if from the sea itself should blow — 
From the sea itself, from the lonely sea, 

A strange new wind; then I should know, — 
And — perhaps — those leaves would turn to me! 



THE MIST 45 



THE MIST 



IN and out of the mist 
We waver, ghosts that we are! 
And the hands and lips we have kissed 

Beckon us from afar: 
Beckon us, whisper us, cry to us, 

In and out of the mist; 
Mock us, elude us, fly from us; 

The hands and lips we have kissed. 

In and out of the mist, like ghosts 

We waver along the shore, 
Flickering phantom-hosts, 

Lost evermore — evermore! 
Whispering, beckoning, sighing, 

Weeping, vexing the night, 
Nothing can stop our crying, 

Except red burning light! 

Ghosts in the mist are we, 

And ghosts are the planets who peer 
And peep at our misery, 

With their tender pitiful leer; 
But the great vermilion sun 

That in one moment's blaze 
Could melt, transfigure, and clarify, 

And outline against eternity, 
Our inmost selves and our troubled days, 



46 OPTIMISM 



The laughing, careless, reckless sun, 
The life-giver, when all is done, 

Knowing no weakness or tenderness, 
Having no pity for our distress, 

Sick to death of our mists and lies, 
Pours himself upon other skies. 



OPTIMISM 

YOU who boast you're an optimist, 
May the leprosy of the Jews 
Wither your flesh for the truth you've missed 
And the cozening lies you use! 

One little child, tender and weak, 

Hurt by life's devil's-wheel 
Should make you blush thro' your bowels sleek, 

But you are not worthy to feel. 

As long as the smallest one 

Of earth's children by pain is riven, 

As long as one cry goes up under the sun, 
God must not be forgiven! 

He does not forgive Himself, 
The rain in the night is his prayer, 

From the cross, from the cross, he forgives such 
pelf 
As you — who hung him there! 



THEAPPEAL 47 



THE APPEAL 

OH that at this last hour 
The word might be given me 
To tell you the power — the power 
That you have over me! 

Oh that I could enfold 

Dyed in purple and blue, 
Writ in gold upon gold, 

The feeling I have for you! 

What can I give to you 
To take on your cruel way, 

That will cry at your heart all night 
And cry at your heart all day! 

What can I find for you 

To place close to your breast — 
Something fatal and true, 

Something to trouble your rest? 

O, wraith of the rain and the mist, 
How can I live without you? 

You float on a sea of amethyst 
And the moon is silver about you! 

You float and drift on a shadowy tide, 
And the feathered reeds bend low, 



48 THE APPEAL 



And the moonlit pastures yearn to your side, 
And the forests beckon you. 

Each night, each night ere my eyelids fall 

I shall feel you calling to me, 
With a low persistent plaintive call, 

Like a sea-bird lost on the sea! 

And I shall answer and you will hear, 

And above the wind and rain 
The people a strange sobbing will hear; 

We shall be together again. 

Oh that at this last hour 

The word might be given me 
To tell you the power — the power 

That you have over me! 



GOD 49 



GOD 



WHAT is that face at the window? 
What is that form at the door? 
Of white mist are its shadowy limbs 
And with moonlight covered o'er. 

Is it a girl or a ghost? 

Pile up the fuel higher! 
Pour out the wine and heat the roast! 

Let us warm ourselves at the fire. 

Look! It wavers and moans. 

It is very cold and drear! 
Pelt it with nuts and cherry-stones! 

It must not enter here. 

Let us talk philosophy, 

While the roast is on the spit. 

That moonlit thing which wavers there, 
What have we to do with it? 

Listen! Its white lips move. 

Christ! Are you mad that you rise 
As if each one saw his buried love 

Stand living before his eyes? 

I have no love. I lie! 

I lie not! — The wine is poured 
And the roast is ready; and I — 

I refuse to believe in God! 



50 PERSEPHONE 



PERSEPHONE 

AT last! 
After the dumb sick longing; — 
At last! 

Filling the ancient urns 
With odours and all the air 

With a shudder, a laughter, a cry — 
On a wind blown over leagues of tremulous grass, 

Leagues of transparent grass, 
Leagues of a million of grass-blades moist with 
rain, 
Moist with warm rain and fresh from the brown 
earth — 

At last! 

The ravished one, the birth-pale one, 
The holy one, the wanton one, 

The Spring returns! 

O, youth of the world! 

O, martyred innocents! 
Murdered on all these battlefields of ours — 

Fields that are wet with something else than 
rain — 
Is it your blood that lends unto our flowers 

This quivering beauty that redeemeth pain? 
For at last! 

The ravished one, the birth-pale one, 
The holy one, the wanton one, 

The Spring returns! 



WITH FLOWERS IN OUR HANDS 51 



THE VISITOR 

FRGET? I had forgotten 
Little the use! 
A feather in the doorway — 
The flood is loose. 

Forget? I had forgotten. 

No candle burns. 
A leaf within the doorway — 

The dead returns. 

Forget? I had forgotten. 

Nail up the door! 
You should nail up my heart 

If she's to come no more. 



WITH FLOWERS IN OUR HANDS 

GOME let us walk thro' their burning hell 
With flowers in our hands! 
With flowers in our hands let us walk there, 
And see what power that evil air, 
That evil air and those burning hours, 
Have to hurt us who carry flowers! 



52 WAR 



WAR 

THESE, these are not the hours 
For mention of sweet flowers, 
Or for light whispers blown thro' brittle reeds, 
The smoke of war's eclipse, 
Rolls dark across love's lips, 
Cypris is silent while Adonis bleeds. 

So be it. It is so. 

And yet while come and go 

Sun, moon and stars, the old emotions waken 
Which, while we breathe, we must 
Feel thro' our human dust 

Even tho' the pillars of the earth are shaken. 

Oh hero hosts struck low, 
That a new world may know, 

Some rest from power, some escape from pride, 
Faint over each dear head, 
The shamed gods must shed 

Tears for the cruel pain in which you died. 

Never quite as before, 

Will spring come to our door — 

A red stain lies upon love's tender star. 
All born of human race, 
Henceforth upon the place, 

Where beats the heart must feel an aching scar. 



WAR 



53 



In Nature's judgment-hall, 
The gods are guilty all, 

All who stood by and let these things be done. 
New Hope the world may gain, 
It is not worth the pain — 

Not worth it! — of one torn and martyred one! 



54 T O L U L U 



TO LULU 

IT is not only love 
That for one another we feel, 
But a strange, a strange identity, 
Like spokes of the same wheel. 

Yes, we have walked together, 

With buttercup dust on our shoes, 
Thro' the lovely rainy weather 

With nothing to win or lose, 
And the wild-rose scent of the hedges, 

And the wild-thyme scent of the hill, 
And the fresh, damp smell of the river sedges 

Are with us still. 

Can they ever come back again, 

Those infinite, mystical hours, 
With love dissolved in the rain 

And pain asleep in the flowers, 
Where the men we met were like men, 

On some God-like errand bound, 
And the girls we met were — like girls 

As the world goes round! 

Will they ever come back? Will they ever? 

Who can say? But at least they were, 
And God himself can never 

Of the past make empty air; 



THEORACLE $$ 



Should one of us die, the other 
Will have two souls to keep — 

His own and what was his brother 
Saved from sleep. 

For it is not only love, 
That for one another we feel; 

But a strange, a strange identity 
Like spokes of the same wheel! 



THE ORACLE 

THE world is malleable," you said 
And like a young god passing by 
Who with large gesture carelessly 
Raises to life one who is dead. 

That royal oracle sets free 

The old sweet reckless powers of chance, 
And lifts from lovely circumstance 

The monolith of destiny. 

"The world is malleable" you said, 
"And its horizons still are blue." 

Oh subtle heart, oh crafty head! 
I take the hint and follow you! 



§6 THEYSAY 



THEY SAY 

THEY say the sky is azure fair, 
I do not know; 
They say the spring is in the air, 

It may be so. 
They say the crimson-throated shrike 

Will nest this year in Alder Dyke — 
'Tis very like, 'tis very like. 

The spring? Oh God, in heaven above, 
Let the spring go — give me my Love! 



OVER 



57 



OVER 

WITH the blood of my heart on my hand 
As the wind goes over the hill, 
Very quiet I stand 

At your darkened window-sill. 

Does the rain that beats on your roof, 
Thro' your dreams send not one cry? 

In all the world is there no reproof 
For your thoughtless cruelty? 

Do you see on the shore of dreams 

In the misty nebulous land 
A bowed phantom who seems 

To carry blood on his hand? 

Do you hear as the pale rain drifts 

Over yellow poppies and graves, 
A desperate pleading that lifts 

Its voice above the waves? 

The voice of the love that your frown 

Has driven from human breath, 
Do you hear it wandering up and down 

Over the country and over the town, 
From the reedy shores of death? 



58 OVER 

Rise up, rise up for awhile, 
And press your shadowy cheek 

Against the window and smile, 
I will not beckon or speak. 

I will only show you the blood 
As a sign, a symbol, a token — 

Be happy now in your mood, 
The golden bowl is broken. 



THE WILLOW-SEEDS 59 



THE WILLOW-SEEDS 

LOOK! The seeds of a willow-tree, 
Falling on grass that must have grown, 
In this one spot for a thousand years! 
The tossing wind like a gusty sea 
Over the elder-bushes blown, 
Over the hollow-foliaged elms, 
With their orbed shadows in hemispheres, 
What wild, strange thoughts it brings to me 
From what deep reluctant realms! 

Can Fate itself remember the day 

When I wandered here from some sea-shore? 

I saw these elder-bushes, I saw 

This lonely place — that tree-trunk grey; 

I saw the willow-seeds cover the grass — 

The grass that has grown for a thousand years! 

I saw the hollow-foliaged elms, 

And then, as now, from reluctant realms, 

Came thoughts that would not pass. 

What lives we lead — dear God, what lives! 

What a palimpsest of double days, 

The Master of our journey gives! 

Forever round our casual ways 

Strange omens peer, strange portents wink; 

And we stand darkly on the brink 

Of more than mortal mysteries. 



60 REVERSION 



REVERSION 

SOMETHING has kept us apart 
And has flowed between us twain — 
Yet my heart has always been to your heart 
As the earth to the healing rain — 
But a shadow of sorrow has wounded your breast 
And a far-off fragrance has troubled my rest 
And we have been kept apart. 

But now all will be well! 

The immortal gods have spoken! 

Fate moves at last with the long-drawn swell 

Of the sea; and the charm is broken. 

Out of the magical night, 

Full of shadows and whispering streams; 

Out of the hollow, holy night 

Where fade all passing dreams, 

We meet and all is well. 

And the eyelids of sorrow, the lips of delight 
Are bathed in Iethe-drenched moonlight, 
In oblivious, infinite moonlight, 
In the deep mandragora of the night; 
And we meet — and all is well. 



FORONCE 6l 



FOR ONCE 

THRUST upward your green shoots and drink 
the rain 
Tulip and daffodil! Not till I die 
Shall my heart throb with such a spring again 
Or from the wine-press of my ecstasy 
Such purple waves flow o'er the city's towers, 
Making a sunrise of the midnight seas, 
And on far roads, like royal embassies, 
Telling the green earth of my happy hours. 

Not till I die shall such a spring return, 
But memory will return, borne on faint airs, 
And from the ashes of its ravished urn 
Love will repeat the spring-time of its prayers. 
How then will look, 'mid such rememberings 
These places, where the prints of ancient pain 
Hold me, until, with laughter and with rain, 
You come to me, O Spring of all my Springs? 

They will be brimmed with tears intolerable, 
They will be tender with an infinite light, 
They will be sadder than a sunken bell, 
They will be sweeter than a lover's night, 
They will be exquisite with broken sighs, 
And faintly whispered words that catch the breath, 
They will be quiet as the wings of death, 
That quiver between two eternities. 



6l FORONCE 

Thrust upward your green shoots and drink the sun, 
Tulip and daffodil! The leaves shall spread 
Their foliage and the punctual seasons run 
Their unremitted course till I am dead. 
O Memory, Memory, sharp must be your sting 
And bitter-sweet; for 'till my dream-tossed world 
Into the night from which it rose is hurled, 
No more, no more shall I know such a Spring! 



THESATURNIAN 63 



THE SATURNIAN 

AH, I must follow it high and low, 
Tho' it leave me cold to your human 
touch! 
Some starry sorcery made me so; 

And from my birth have I been such. 

What is it I follow so secret-lone? 

Over the hills and along the sea? 
Beauty with every seed is sown, 

For you, for them, for me? 

Not so, by the gods! Do I not hear 
In the night a tender-muffled crying, 

Rising, falling, sinking, dying? 
Oh, I must follow it thro' the world! 

Not so, by the gods! When the dawn-wind stirs, 

Rustling over the river-reeds, 
Trembling over the wet pastures, 

Shall I not follow it, whither it leads? 

Oh, wild and sad, oh, wild and sweet, 
Is the lonely horn that I always hear, 

Blown from the place where all streams meet, 
Where all horizons disappear! 

The long sea-tides bring home to port, 
Their ships by many a moonlit wharf, 



64 THESATURNIAN 

But an ebbing twilight carries my thought 
Beyond every coast it would anchor off. 

Like a reef-bell rocking and ringing low, 

Under a grey and rain-swept sky, 
The beauty I follow doth come and go, 

And if I found it, I should die. 

The wild-bird of my longing sings 

Always in the next hollow, 
And always, always it spreads its wings, 

When I cross the hill to follow. 

Ah! Once when the burning noon was poured 
On moss and stone and dreaming sod, 

I saw the great blue flower that God 
Made for the Son of God. 

And do you think I can go content, 

With the beauty we meet with everywhere, 

When I have breathed that flower's scent 
And seen it melt into the air? 

Oh, I must follow it high and low, 

Though it leave me cold to your human touch, 
Some starry sorcery made me so; 

And from my birth have I been such. 



OBSEQUIES 6$ 



THE HOUR 



GOME let us take this hour and hold it up 
While our stars shine, 
Leaving our joy untouched, as in a cup 

Of unspilt wine; 
Then, though the deluge break and we be driven 

Into the grave, 
Like gods unto the gods we shall have given 
The gift they gave. 



OBSEQUIES 

INCH by inch — for it takes some time, this 
thing — 
You have killed my love; 
Till at last a look, a gesture, an anything 

Did fatal prove. 
And now, ah now, how desperately you cling 

To its dead bier. 
As tho' thro' your calm breast passed the same 
sting 
That laid it here! 



66 ACCUSATION 



ACCUSATION 

IF this is what you meant, 
Why did you not go by? 
I had got used to my lonely place 
And amid the shadows had found a face, 
A phantom-face 'neath a pallid sky, 
A phantom-face 'neath a leaden tent — 
Why did you not go by, 
If this is what you meant? 

Why did you not pass on, 

If this is what you meant? 

Why did you rise like a dumb moss-rose, 

Brooding in somnolent repose, 

Just where the moonlight shone, 

On the path of my content? 

Why did you not pass on, 

If this is what you meant? 

Why did you not go past, 

If this is what you meant? 

Why did you fling abroad in the air 

A royal ransom of rich despair? 

Why with rain were your petals so full 

And with dew why were you so beautiful? 

The charm that held me fast 

Had never then been rent. 

Why did you not go past, 

If this is what you meant? 



THEMONK 67 



THE MONK 

OUT of our Lady's cloister torn, 
I swept like a hunted flame, 
Over valleys and hills forlorn 

To a leafy wood where in shades are born 
Mosses without a name. 

And there I found — poor monk that I was — 

My curse, my fate, my spell — 
Lightly she leaped from the leafy grass 

With a sigh like a vesper-bell. 
And her eyes to me had the strange soft look 

Of the " Introibo" signs 
In my illumined Missal-book, 

Where the "Sursum Corda" begins. 

O God! I loved her from my heart; 

And a little she loved me! 
And day and night she led me apart 

Where the flickering sunbeams gleam and dart 
In the mid- wood's mystery. 

Her childish movements, her broken words, 

They were my only beads. 
For choir we had the twittering birds, 

For candles the moonlit reeds. 

O God! I loved her from my heart, 
And a little she loved me! 



68 THEMONK 



And to watch her laughter flicker and dart 

And the rose in her cheeks come and depart, 
Were the prayers of my breviary. 

But alas for the monk from his cloister strayed! 

Cold in that very place 
Where the hyacinths grew in leafiest shade 

And my Love's head by my side was laid 
I saw our Lady's face. 

And all night now and all day too, 

I tremble those twain between; 
And I hate the sky for its holy blue 

And the earth for its heathen green. 
I have lost my love because of my heaven 

And my heaven because of my love. 
Is there no mercy ever given 

To him that two faiths move? 



DESERTED 69 



DESERTED 

NONE know her; none remember her. 
Cold lies she. Round the place 
The wind-blown shadows as they stir 

Fall on no human face. 
Leagues distant the moon draws the tide 

As the moon has always done. 
Whom does she draw to her dead side? 
Not one of us — not one! 



The grasses sway beside the door; 

The wind shrieks thro' the hedge. 
No fire-light thrown across the floor 

Reddens the window-ledge. 
Gone! All, all gone! save those faint ghosts 

Her memories, her pain, 
And on the roof the fluttering hosts 

Of leaves that fall like rain. 

And yet the same sky overhead — 

The same moon in the sky! 
Surely some token of the dead 

Who went so wistfully, 
Some sign, some token, lingering on 

In earth or air or sea, 
Must cry upon the hearts of stone 

That can let these things be! 



70 REMORSE 



REMORSE 

I WROTE my remorse on a forest-leaf 
That the wind might bear it to you; 
But the wind cared nothing for my grief 
And over your roof it flew. 
I wrote my remorse on a leaf for you; 
But you never knew. 

I wrote my remorse on the glimmering sand 
Where your tired feet might stray; 
But the sea rose up and covered the land 
And carried my words away. 
I wrote my remorse on the sand for you; 
But you never knew. 

I wrote my remorse on the breast 
Of the Sphinx with the woman's eyes; 
And your name remained — but the rest, the rest 
Turned sorcery and lies! 
I wrote on the Sphinx's breast for you; 
But you never knew. 

And now, when you weep o'er the spot 
Where, earth in earth, I rot, 
Do you read, as the rank-grown grass you pull, 
What remorse has a grinning skull? 
And do you laugh too and let all go? 
I shall never know! 



TO ISADORA DUNCAN J I 

TO ISADORA DUNCAN 

WITH the gesture of a god, 
You gave me back my youth; 
And a scent of violets 
Overflowed the world. 
With the gesture of a god, 
You gave me back my love, 
And tears deeper than tears 
Overflowed my heart. 
With the gesture of a god, 
You trampled on fate, 
You lifted up on high 
Those that had fallen — 
All the oppressed, 
All the humiliated, 
All the offended; 
You lifted them up on high 
And they were comforted. 
With the gesture of a god, 
You wrestled with Demogorgon; 
You brought hope back 
And freedom and triumph 
To those whom the world had crushed. 
All of us, sitting in darkness, 
Saw a great light. 

You danced as dance the morning stars 
And the universe was conquered. 
You smote the universe in the mouth; 
And you saved us — 
You — a woman. 



72 TRAVELLERS 



TRAVELLERS 

TOO many times have we both been born; 
Too far have we voyaged — dear Christ, 
too far! 
Too deep disguises have we both worn, 
And the masks of too many an avatar! 

I catch on your face the old sad smile 

Of our ancient disillusionment, 
When the ardent crowd tries to beguile 

Your world-old soul to impassionment. 

And in a moment I know you again, 

And you know me and we mock them all, 

As we did of old on the Trojan plain, 
As we did of old on the Roman wall. 

As we did in Carthage and Syracuse, 

As we did in Syria and Cathay, 
One look — and in a moment they lose 

All hold on us. We have slipped away. 

Love? Let them talk of Love! Our bond 
Goes deeper. It has been sealed in death. 

We have looked on Isis in Trebizond 
And in Tyre have worshipped Ashtoreth. 

Truth? Let them talk of Truth! We laugh, 
Who have seen Eleusis wreath'd in flame 

And the high lamps swung o'er the cenotaph 
Of Her the immortals must not name. 



TRAVELLERS 73 



Beauty? As tho' breathed not from you 

The very dawn of creation's day, 
When the planets with all their retinue 

Leaped forth to meet you on your way! 

Our dreams have mingled. The new times bring 

Old snatches of buried memory, 
Which trouble us like a whispering, 

Heard at the bottom of the sea. 

We have been too far; we have dived too deep, 
Death itself cannot quench the spark. 

We know too much of the ways of sleep 
To fear the everlasting dark. 



74 THEDANCE 



THE DANCE 

DANCE on; we would not touch you, 
Nay — let us turn aside, 
Lest the shadow of what we've looked on 
In our eyes should be descried. 
Somewhere at least must fingers 
Be clasped to the burning sun; 
Somewhere must limbs be music 
To the tune the fates have spun; 
Somewhere the high immortals 
Must have oblations poured; 
Somewhere in classic portals, 
The gods must be adored; 
Somewhere must life be beauty 
Though the prophets darken their eyes, 
Somewhere must beauty be very truth 
Though the planets fall from the skies. 
Dance on: heed not our plight; 
Dance on: be cruel and free; 
Dance like a flame in the night! 
Dance like a star on the sea! 



TWILIGHT 75 



TWILIGHT 

OH day of shadows and scents! Oh day of 
roses! 
Roses down-drooping into the dark lane — 
Once, ere this indolent twilight ebbs and closes, 
Have pity and restore my dead again! 

Soon will the moon rise, luminous and tender! 

Already on the night her pallor is shed. 
O roses, roses, pity me and render 

Back for one hour my darling from the dead! 

God! How the air is full of shadows and roses! 

Shadows and scents and roses fill the lane — 
Somewhere — oh listen! — where a river flows is 

Music beyond all pleasure and all pain! 

Oh large and indolent midsummer-night! 

Breaking our hearts with memories that bleed, 
Oh night of roses, oh moon-tranced night, 

Have mercy! Give me back the one I need! 



76 THETUNE 



THE TUNE 

I PLAY ED a crazy tune 
To the river-weeds. 
I played it to the moon, 
And the sad dark reeds. 

And the face that for so long 

Has vexed me hour by hour 
Like the rhyme of a lost song, 

Like the scent of a dead flower, 

Drew near me; and the cold 

Lethean, lamentable 
Lilt of my love-song old, 

To give me her lips was able! 

But I played a note too high 

Or I played a note too low — 
And the same moon looks down from the sky 

And the same waters flow. 



REACTION 77 



REACTION 

OH heart, sink into yourself and rally 
The old fierce strength of your lonely 
mood — 
Tho' the train goes whistling thro' the valley, 
And the moths go fluttering thro' the wood. 

The cold dew rises from field and river, 
The night-wind wanders from hill to hill, 

The tall June grasses sigh and quiver, 
Oh heart, sink into yourself, be still! 

Have done with love and its shilly-shally! 

Have done with love and its poison-smart! 
Oh heart, sink into yourself and rally 

The old fierce strength of your lonely mood — 
Let the train go whistling thro' the valley 

And the moths go fluttering thro' the wood. 
Return to your solitude, oh heart! 



78 SATURN 



SATURN 

IT is the place! 
No moon, no mist, no sound, 
As the oracles had writ, 
Only the huge and starry night, 
Liquid, cool, and infinite, 
Lit with lamps, by the old gods lit, 
Floating, floating, over it, 
Over the place I have found. 

It is the place! 
I had known it, in the deep 

Full-brimmed cup of flowing sleep, 
From which, in the vast silence, I 

Had drunk inviolability. 

It is the place! 
Upon the terrace I step forth 

And look to the east and look to the north. 
On the north there are water-meadows wide, 

With shadowy reeds on every side. 
On the east — ah! where can I have seen 

Mists and marshes so grey and green? 
In no human dream I have known this place. 
How slow is the sun to show his face! 

Did ever the winds with so indrawn breath 
Wait and listen, and listen and wait? 

Did ever life come so near to death 
And remain so wistful and passionate? 



SATURN 79 

The silence deepens. The grey cold light, 
Stealing over the pools and the reeds — 

Is it only the common dawn? This night 
For more than the morning intercedes. 

Oh night, and have I not also prayed? 

Oh dawn, and have I not also cried — 
Betrayed! betrayed! betrayed! betrayed! — 

Unto the hollow spaces wide? 

It is the place! 
And now as the vapours rise, 

And now as the mist recedes, 
In his old immortal guise, 

Looking down on the reeds, 
Luminous, lovely, silver bright, 

Heaven's antagonist, bearer of light; 
Still untouched by passion's stir, 

Loving the earth and laughing at her — 

Son of the Morning, Lucifer! 

Then I heard them. From the far 

Ledges of the dawn I heard them. 
Every fragile, quivering thing 

Of earth's primal gendering; 
Every hidden, trembling, shy 

Child of ancient mystery, 
Raised a cry out of the cold 

Shadows of the forests old; 
Cold and low and sweet and clear, 

Like a sea-shell held to a sea-god's ear — 



80 SATURN 

"They have buried him in vain! 

Saturn, Saturn comes again! 
He was old. He was weak. He was dolorous, 

And they buried him far away from us. 
They planted mountains upon his breast 

And they mocked and said, 'There let him rest! 
Let the leaves of aeons of forests dead 

Cover his eyelids, hide his head! 
Into a midnight deep as the world, 

Let his old sad, mad heart be hurled!'" 
Ah, that cry! From many a pool 

Where are reflected strange dim faces, 
Faces tender and sad and cool, 

Under the shadow of leafy places, 
Came that voice that still I hear, 

Wild and low and sweet and clear, 
Over hushed dew-drenched lawns, 

Where rivers flow from secret dawns; 
Over forests faint and dim, 

Where the leaves and the shadows remember him. 
"They have buried him in vain! 

Saturn, Saturn comes again!" 

Oh tremulous hope! Oh large escape 

From the intolerable oppressors! 
Oh bent and bowed, resume your shape 

And dispossess the dispossessors! 

Bring back the old and tender things, 
The things that weep, the things that play 

By the margins of eternal springs, 
Where twilight is lovelier than day, 



SATURN 8l 

And the white dawn never flows away. 
Oh tremulous hope! Oh large escape! 
Oh bent and bowed, resume your shape 

And disposses the dispossessors! 

Can it be true? 
Can the weak overcome the strong? 

Can forgiveness all things cover? 
Can the singer hear the end of his song? 

Can the loved return to the lover? 

Oh planet silver-scornful, oh planet calm! 

Riding the ether alone, 
Will this great dawn bring us the longed-for balm 

And for all griefs atone? 

Still low and sweet the cry comes to my ears — 
"They have buried him in vain!" — 

But fainter, fainter, comes it, and cold salt tears 
Are on my cheek again. 

It is the place! 
From the high terrace I lean forth 

And look to the east and look to the north. 
Oh pity! Why does that sweet cry fail? 

And why grows Lucifer so pale? 
Why do the lovely and tender things 

Sink back again to their primal springs? 
What wheels are those whose terror draws nigh, 

Rolling up the slope of the sky? 
Look! 



82 SATURN 

Must it forever be like this? 
Oh Fate! Oh Fate remediless! 
Look! 

Out of the east with a stream of blood, 

With music no man has understood, 
With splendour, with power, with terrible joy, 

With strength to create and strength to destroy; 
Kissing all life with a careless kiss, 

Creating pain, creating bliss; 
The dead, the dead only, free from him, 

Red with blood from rim to rim, 
Over the conquered throat of the world 

The chariot of the sun is hurled! 

And so — it is not the place; 

And once more I bow my face. 
They have not buried him in vain! 

Saturn will never come again! 
They rule — they rule from sky to sky. 

Hopeless — hopeless, was that cry! 
And yet — 
Though the oracles have lied to us, 

And the gulfs of space have cried to us, 
And every chance has died to us, 

Oh Saturn, Oh Lucifer, Oh Christ — 
Oh Love — 



THESHOES 83 



THE SHOES 

I HAVE a pair of new shoes. 
They are nice. They have low heels." 
So her letter says, and the brief words bruise 
My soul and break deep seals. 

It is strange! I have talked with her 

Of the wistful tears of things; 
Of the earth and the gods and the thoughts that 

stir 
The soul, as a wave-tossed voyager 

Is stirred by the touch of wings. 

But nothing of all I said 

Of the gods and the fatal sky, 
And the magical stars that over each head 

Go heavy with destiny, 
Had half such power to bruise; 

Or break such world-deep seals, 
As, "I have a pair of new shoes. 

They are nice. They have low heels." 



84 



ETERNITY 



ETERNITY 

ETERNITY is a wind-blown husk 
And fools run after it; 
And when a sand-storm brings the dusk, 
They call it the infinite. 

On the surface — the surface — is Beauty found, 

And the surface of life goes deep; 
For where it is lost in the underground, 

We sleep — we sleep — we sleep. 

There is nothing else but the surface of life, 

Nor ever was nor will be! 
— Except the sleep that endeth life; 

And may that fall gently on me! 

Fall gently on me, and ere it fall, 

Let me once more pretend 
That the one I love the most of all, 

Is with me at the end. 

Let the wind-blown husk, eternity, 

Dance over infinite sand, 
So the one I love come once to me, 

And give me her little hand! 



THEMASK 85 



THE MASK 

WITH treacheries bitter and deep 
I have kept my place. 
With a mask like the mask of sleep 
I have covered my face. 

I have smiled while my heart beneath 

Was deadly with fate, 
And the sword in my jewelled sheath 

Was white with my hate. 

But now as you lift up your hand, 

Light as a flower, 
By the word of the wind in the sand 

I know it, my hour! 

And I drop my mask and let fall 
The sheath from my sword — 

You shall know me, O my one of all, 
As I am before God! 



86 



WHAT WE SAY 



WHAT WE SAY 

YOU have gathered somewhere to you 
The softness of pastures cool, 
And the tender, ineffable blue 

Of the deep leaf-shadowed pool, 
Where a lovelier sky than ours 

Sinks down between wavering weeds 
And the roots of the floating water-flowers 
Blend with the roots of the reeds, j 

You have gathered to you somewhere 

The passion of hyacinth-stains, 
Where the odorous moss-dark air 

Is moist with a thousand rains; 
You have formed your virgin flesh 

Of the suppliance of crescent moons, 
And the tender ferns that enmesh 

The shadows of summer noons. 

When my days are yours there passes 

With primrose-scented showers, 
The thought of cool deep grasses 

And beds of cuckoo-flowers; 
When my nights are yours, my dreams 

Are full of the flight of swallows, 
Dipping their wings in rushy streams 

And shady river-hollows. 



WHATWESAY 87 

O child, you have made your own 

All lovely and delicate things, 
And losing you, I am left alone 

In a place where no bird sings; 
In a place where no reeds quiver 

Or tender rain goes by, 
Nor clouds nor cooling river 

Soften the arid sky. 



BE HARD! 



"BE HARD!" 

SWEET Christ — our hearts should be stone. 
Then it would be the end! 

For the sake of one — of one 

I hurt my friend. 

There should be lamps in the sky, 

Not dead moons flickering, 

Not mists to cover us. 
There should be lamps in the sky. 
We tread too heavily 

And the darkness is over us. 
Sweet Christ, our hearts should be stone! 

There should be lamps in the sky 

To read the loneliness, 
The loneliness we cannot smother 
While blindly we stab at one another 

With a rage that is a cry. 

O that our hearts in one lightning flash 

Were illumined thro' and thro'! 
Then we should know the oak from the ash, 

The rosemary from the rue! 
Then would be proved what we dare not prove, 

And seen what we dare not see; 
Then love would be justified of love, 

And a friend a friend would be. 



"be hard!" 89 

There are no lamps in the sky; 

There are hearts under all our feet, 
And we tread heavily, 

And the circle is complete. 
Sweet Christ, our hearts should be stone! 

Then it would be the end. 
For the sake of one — of one — 

I hurt my friend. 



90 MANY WATERS 



"MANY WATERS" 

BRIGHT and terrible Love, 
From the depths of your bitter sea, 
I turn my eyes to your planet above, 
Tender and luminous, O Love — 

And its splendour healeth me. 
Tender and large you swim into sight, 

A Lotus, a lamp of liquid light. 
You lean on the sunset and draw the night 

As the night draws the sea. 
Your tide is bitter, O terrible Love, 

In which I sink and drown, 
But large and luminous, high above, 

Your planet still looks down, 
And the bitter waves that go over me 

Are bright with your serenity. 



THEBASSARID 91 



THE BASSARID 

DANCE with the Maenad crowd; 
Follow your pulses' beat, 
Toss back your hair from your forehead proud; 
Crush in the madness of cymbals loud 
The hyacinths at your feet. 

Deep in the dewy dawn, 

Where the serpent of passion hisses, 
Pan and Sylvan and Satyr and Faun, 
Let them whirl you on through the branches torn, 

And stain your mouth with kisses. 

With parted lips and with eyes 

Brimming and drugged and bright, 
Cry aloud your wild Thessalian cries, 
Cry aloud your Phrygian ecstasies, 

In the hot perfumed night. 

Let the wood-spurge cling to your waist, 

Let the woodbine tangle your hair. 
Let your breast by hazels be embraced 
And from oozing green-wood sap be a taste 

Of pungent ivy there. 

With wild-flung arms and with limbs 

Shuddering and wounded lips, 
Cry aloud as your brain in frenzy swims, 
And loosed by the sweetness of Bacchic hymns, 

Your vine-wreathed girdle slips. 



92 THE BASSARID 

As the torches flicker and fall, 

Flame on through the dew-dark wood; 
Answer the thrill of the mad god's call 
To the bitter end of the festival 
With every drop of your blood. 

Fear not. When back you steal, 

Broken and weary, to me, 
With oil and wine I will surely heal 
Each bruise and hurt that your senses feel, 

As I take you on my knee. 

I will heal each hurt of your outraged soul, 

Each mark of the wood-god's force. 
I will cause the eternal sea to roll 
With waves more pure than the boreal pole 
Over your least remorse! 



T H E C R Y 93 



THE CRY 



DO you not hear her crying 
Out and away and beyond? 
Those are the grasses sighing 

To the lilies in the pond! 
All night long they sigh and talk 

As the wind wails up the garden-walk. 
They sigh to the lilies in the pond — 

But what do they know of away and beyond? 

Do you not hear her crying 

Out and beyond and afar? 
Those are the wild-swans flying 

Towards the evening star! 
All night long they fly to the west; 

And a hundred forests beneath them rest, 
And a hundred sunsets behind them are! 

But what do they know of beyond and afar? 

Out and away and beyond, 

I tell you I hear her crying! 
Beyond the grass and the pond — 

Beyond the wild-swans flying — 
Do you think I am mad that I know not 

That rise and fall in her cry? 
There is no God if I go not 

To find her before I die! 



94 RENEWAL 



RENEWAL 

OVER the heavy hills, over the drowning seas, 
The shadows ride; 
And the bowed necks of the gods, 
Drooping like willow-trees, 

Sink side by side. 
While over their heads the shadows go, 

Drifting, whirling across the sky, 
And voices that are not voices flow, 
Flow and mingle and lose themselves 

In a cry that is no cry. 
It must have been in a broken dream 

Somewhere else than under our heaven, 
That I saw the yellow cowslips gleam 

And marigolds to the meadows given. 
For while such murder as this is done 

And shadows like this ride on the night, 
How can the feet of the spring be light? 
How can the sap through the branches run? 
The natural look of human faces 

Is altered. Delicate thoughts are fled. 
Torn and gashed in blood-strewn places, 

More than the heart can count lie dead. 
Bow low your heads, ye gods! 

While the troops of the murdered 
Rush by you, rush by you on terrible wings. 
Bow low your heads, ye gods! 
It is not you who will bring us better things. 



RENEWAL 95 



We have no hope left, save in her, 

The ancient mother of men, 
And the old ineffable stir 

Of life breaking forth again! 

Moss upon ruins, 

Grass upon graves, 

And the fragile leaves of hope 

In the cracks of broken hearts. 
For the faint wind-flowers will quiver yet, 

And beneath impenetrable trees, 
Will bloom as of old the violet, 

In the ashes of these insanities. 



96 UNDERSTANDING 



UNDERSTANDING 

HE does not understand 
Or know his own heart's truth!" 
I heard her say, with a wave of her hand, 
And the treacherous hope of youth. 

Ah! beautiful one, indeed 

He does not; nor ever will 
For all the tears that your heart may bleed 

And the tears your eyes may fill. 

Till the rivers flow back to their source, 
Till the grass grow on desert sand, 

Till the terrible planets change their course, 
He will not understand. 

Let him go. But the further he goes 

The closer you keep, my dear, 
Something he little knows, 

Something he cannot hear. 
You have touched the eternal sea 

And the gods have taken your hand. 
When he speaks of the love that used to be, 

You will not understand. 



THERE IT is! 



97 



THERE IT IS! 

LET ft go, then; let it go! 
It was that frail thing 
You will never, never know, 

Winter-time or Spring. 
It was only what the sad 

Poets used to call 
Love, and praise in many a mad 
Song and madrigal! 

Let it go, then; let it go! 

Send your pity after! 
For this thing called love is so, 

Pity moves its laughter, 
Did you whisper the word "friend"? 

Send that also packing! 
Let the smoke be at an end 

When the flame is lacking! 

All is well. I blame you not. 

You were born to this. 
God in heaven! 'Twas I forgot 

What a woman is! 
Let it go, child, let it go! 

I can live without you. 
But I cannot bear life so, 

Loving you, to doubt you! 



98 PAXVOBISCUM 



PAX VOBISCUM 

OH eyelids of the dying day, 
Fall gently on her pain. 
And give her peace and take away 
The madness from her brain!" 

So wept the trees, so sighed the grass, 

As that pale form went by; 
But the weary evening let her pass, 

And the sun sank pitilessly. 

"Oh healing ocean of darkness deep, 

Your cool nepenthe pour 
Over her sorrow; give her sleep!" 

Cried the sea to the silent shore. 

But the night looked into her white face 
And read such things written there 

As are written on the gulfs of space — 
Emptiness and despair! 

And the night was helpless and could not stir; 

Then I arose 
And watched the waves of nothingness roll, 

I who was nothing, nothing to her! 

And I took my soul and crucified it, 
Crucified it between night and day. 

Then at last she knew repose, 
And her madness passed away. 



THELANE 99 



THE LANE 

NO one can take away from me 
A storm-swept lane I once wandered through, 
Overhung with ivy and briony, 

And heavy with holly and sombre yew. 

The wind in the tree-tops moaned and cried, 
And 'mid ancient stalks of faded sedge, 

Wild basil drooped, grew pallid, and died; 
And dying marjoram filled the hedge. 

In long-drawn gusts from the down-land's verge, 
The cold rain sobbed disconsolately; 

And borne on the wind from the distant surge, 
The sound of the sea came lamentably. 

Well did I love the rain in my face 

And the smell of the leaf-mould and tangled grass, 
And the flapping wings that rose from the place, 

As flocks of starlings heard me pass. 

And again and again, when in crowded squares 
The pulse of my life falls low and sinks, 

Of the deep-drawn breath of those down-land airs 
My parched and harrowed spirit drinks. 

And I pray to the gods I may find ere I die 
A heart that shall be as that lane to me, 

With wild-tossed branches and windy sky 
And the sound of the everlasting sea! 



100 CONDEMNED 



CONDEMNED 

DO you want to break my heart 
That you say this to me, 
With eyes low-lidded and silent lips — 
"This is the place of love's eclipse. 
Love at this place sinks out of sight, 
As, in a tideless, fathomless night, 

The lead sinks in the sea." 
Do you want to break my heart 
That you say this to me? 

Do you want to break my heart 

That you look thus at me; 
Look without speech, look without sign, 

Look with eyes that meet not mine; 
Look, as if, beyond my face, 
You looked thro' empty gulfs of space 

Into eternity? 
Do you want to break my heart 

That you look thus at me? 

Do you want to break my heart 
That you let your head fall so; 

Fall like a flower with petals furled, 
Forgetting life, forgetting the world? 

Fall on my shoulder and hide it there, 

Like a marble thing whose cold despair 
Has no more tears to flow. 



CONDEMNED 101 

Do you want to break my heart 
That you let your head fall so? 

Hush! Let us pray together! 

Though we have deeply sinned, 
If on the wind stirs a feather, 

If a leaf stirs on the wind, 
We are saved. Oh, far apart! 

Nothing, nothing has stirred. 
Do you want to break my heart 

That you will not speak one word? 



102 THE ROSE-LEAVES 



THE ROSE-LEAVES 

AS long as the roots of the green, green grass 
Grow cool in the kindly clay, 
The rose-leaves of sorrow will fall and pass 
And drift on the wind away. 

Oh, rose-leaves, rose-leaves of delicate sorrow! 

Oh, rose-leaves passionate! 
Over the grasses of tomorrow 

You drift on the wind of fate. 

Lightly, lightly you fall and drift, 
Delicate rose-leaves of exquisite pain; 

But something is left that no wind can lift, 
That returns again, that returns again. 

Quivering rose-leaves, lighter than air, 

The wind may carry you away; 
But your passionate perfume is everywhere, 

The pitiless perfume of yesterday. 

And tho' the roots of the green, green grass 
Grow cool for the feet of tomorrow; 

And tho' on the wind they drift and pass, 
The delicate rose-leaves of sorrow, 



THE ROSE-LEAVES 103 

There are things that stay, there are things that 
stay, 

For the heart to feed upon. 
Though today is more than yesterday, 
And the grass grows green in the kindly clay, 
And the wind has carried the past away, 

And the rose-leaves of sorrow have gone. 



104 THE EXILE 



THE EXILE 



EXILED and alone 
I wander over the land, 
Since gleaming under the sun 

I saw you stand. 
In your passionate, childlike way, 

You looked at me and the old 
Night fled far away. 
And the world was blue and gold. 

Blue was the sky above me; 
Gold was the earth beneath, 
When you leapt forth to love me 

Like a sword out of its sheath! 
Would I had poured them wine, 

The high, remorseless powers! 
Would I had covered their cruel shrine 

With holocausts of flowers! 
Then perchance they had held their hand 

Ere they turned your heart to stone, 
And sent me wandering over the land — 

Exiled, alone! 



MORTMAIN 105 



MORTMAIN 

GREY and ghostly cypresses 
Meet above our bed. 
That is surely why she presses 
Close to me her head. 

Dead are we. Be quite at rest! 

There can be no harm 
If across what was her breast 

I should lay my arm. 

She was never very brave, 

And these damned trees 
A most evil whisper have 

In the midnight breeze. 

Close she clings with body thin; 

She was always slender; 
Do you hold it a deep sin, 

Buried, to be tender? 

She is frightened, she would say, 

But her lips have gone — 
Curse you! Look the other way. 

Read our burial-stone! 

What? She brought me to this pass? 

Brought me to this place? 
Oh, it may be! Turn the glass. 

She had a lovely face. 



I06 FIRST AND LAST 



FIRST AND LAST 

DAWN broke over us cool and sweet 
So long ago! 
The great gods walking in the dew 

Made a path for our feet; 
Gave roses to me and lilies to you, 
And with reeds of the river rare music blew 
And made a path for our feet. 

But the hours that came with the growing light 

Drooped as if they were years, 
And in faint flute-music from far away, 

The gods, departing, turned to say, 
"Nothing can heal the heat of the day 

Save night with its rain of tears." 

The wind may carry the roses away, 
But the human heart can only pray; 

Pray to the gods thro' the weary years 

For night — for night with its rain of tears. 



PIETY 107 



PIETY 

OH liquid moon that silvers the rims 
Of the mountain heights, 
Oh lotus-flower that floats and swims 

In the island nights. 
Oh pale white arms that are stretched to me 

With a siren's song, 
I answer the spell of your witchery; 
I come! I come! 

Wait but awhile, oh white, white arms, 

Wait but awhile. 
I feel your power and I want your charms; 

I need your guile. 
Let me but plant one red, red rose 

On my true Love's tomb, 
Then your tide shall bear me wherever it flows. 

I come! I come! 



108 EVASION 



EVASION 

HAD I loved the wind in its flight, 
Or the storm-cloud darkening the blue. 
Had I loved the meteor crossing the night, 
I had held it closer than you! 

Had I followed the path of the moon 
As it quivers on each wave's crest, 

I had touched the fount of its light more soon 
Than the outermost veil of your breast. 

Whirl on, whirl on, on your way! 

I can wait, my sun-kissed flower. 
At the bitter end of your burning day, 
You will hang your head and the gods will say, 

"She is his. It is his hour." 

No! No! Forgive me, dear heart! 

Even then I'll leave you free. 
The long pursuit, the cruel smart, 

Shall unavenged be. 
Till of yourself you lift your lips, 

My hour shall dwell in its eclipse. 



THE GODS IOQ 



THE GODS 

LET us leave them all, my dear! 
Love, for you, is dead; 
Dead and buried far from here, 
With the shadows on his bier, 
Earth upon his head. 

Let us leave them all, my child! 

Love, for me, has flown; 
Flown and vanished in the wild, 
Reconciled, unreconciled, 

Turning to his own. 

Let us leave them, oh my friend! 

Shall not the deep night 

With its large and liquid breath, 
Like the flowing of calm death, 

Heal our memory at the end 
And make all things right? 

Put the burning fierce unrest 
From your brain and from your breast. 
Let us kiss the earth and rest. 

Ah ! perchance if we lie still — 

Very still and very quiet 
With our pulses' ancient riot 

Hushed and silenced by our will, 



110 THEGODS 

There will come thro' the green shadows, 
Thro' the eternal leafy shadows, 

Lingering, pausing, watching, dreaming, 
Turning all our pain to seeming; 

While the mole of memory delves, 
The immortal gods themselves! 



THEWATER III 



THE WATER 



WHERE the curlew cries all night 
I know a lonely water, 
Tall reeds grow there and they bow the head 

As at the passing of one dead, 
Who had been a king's daughter. 

And a low faint sobbing goes up from them 
Like the voice of the grey, cold rain, 

That drifts without pause o'er the marshes dim, 
Where the road crosses the plain. 

And I gaze with a vacant eye, 

On the shadowy weeds that float, 
With their arabesques of destiny 

Around a fairy boat. 

And I start and shudder with fear, 

What dead went by this water? 
Did my own love drift by me here? 

Was it this that filled me with ghastly fear? 
Was she that king's dead daughter? 

Oh curlew crying again: 

Oh reeds that sob in the waters! 
They are human tears that make this rain 

That darkens the marshes and fills the plain, 
Our loves are all kings' daughters! 



112 THEROSE 



THE ROSE 



MY heart is burnt in this deadly air, 
And the ashes of it are grey, 
But the red, red rose you planted there 
Blooms in my heart alway. 

Out of grey dust and bitter pain, 

Its soft red petals blow; 
For they are washed by morning rain 

And cooled by mountain snow. 

You planted that rose and went your way; 

And though long, long days you're gone, 
Out of the dust of those ashes grey, 

Its petals still bloom on. 

They are fed by love; and the love they need 

My heart can furnish well; 
For the heart whose love has tears that bleed 

Can make flowers bloom in hell. 

They are fed by pain; and pain can draw 
Fresh dew from a dried-up spring; 

For the pain of love has a secret law; 
Can conquer everything. 

With that red rose growing in ashes grey, 

I can bear what fate may send; 
You planted it and went your way — 

You are mine now, till the end! 



THEWOOD 113 



THE WOOD 

GOME with me to the mossy places, 
Where the rippling amber stream, 
Mirroring our shadowy faces, 

Leads us on from dream to dream. 

Come with me where the leaves are still; 

And the wood is hushed like a grassy hill, 
A hill of silence, whose fleecy sheep 

Are the clouds of sleep — the clouds of sleep! 

Heavy and dark are the rain-wet ferns 

Drooping over the rocky pool — 
See how the steamlet ebbs and turns 

Sprinkling the moss with its ripples cool! 

Ah! The wisdom of life is here; 

As old as I, as young as you; 
Thrilling both of us thro' and thro'. 

Ah! The wisdom of life is here! 

In every plant and in every sod, 
The old earth-wisdom here is furled; 

Wisdom older than any god, 
Wisdom older than the world! 

There are whispers here, there are whispers deep, 

Hid in these places, that can raise 
Memories out of caverns of sleep, 

That throw strange meanings upon our days! 



114 THEWOOD 



Is it life, is it life, that all these years, 
We've been living, tasting, and calling good? 

Ah! Your eyes are full of tears! 

The wood has caught you, the magic wood. 

Something breaks down where the wood begins; 

Something breaks down in this hidden spot! 
What are our virtues? What are our sins? 

It matters not! It matters not! 

Round the boulders the ripples play. 

The dead trunks, lying the stream across, 
Catch the sun in a lovelier way 

Than the living plants or the living moss. 

Death, what is it? What do we care? 

It is strange. It is magical. It is well. 
Give me your hand — tie up your hair — 

If I kissed you, the wood-gods would not tell! 



THEBOOK 115 



THE BOOK 

I MOVED from the sun-warmed garden-seat, 
Where the damask-rose petals covered the 
ground, 
And all the people with quiet feet 
Followed the mass-bell's holy sound. 

I left the terrace; I wandered away, 

Past larkspur and lilies and monk's-hood tall, 

To where the lake in its reed-bed lay, 
On the sunset-side of the castle wall. 

With a thousand years in its human sigh 

The vesper murmur came to me 
Of the people's patient piety; 

Then my heart stopped. What did I see? 

I saw her — I saw what the moonlit spell 
Summoned by my dark heathen book, 

Night by night had brought! Too well 
I saw her. Too well I knew her look. 

O lost one — lost one — from days long dead, 
When love gave all and died when it gave! 

O head thrown back! O arms outspread! 
O passion stronger than the grave! 

When the people returned on quiet feet 
From following the mass-bell's holy sound, 



Il6 SUPREME UNCTION 

They found me still on that sun-warmed seat, 
With the damask-rose petals strewn on the 
ground. 

But they did not know that their voices took 
A tone like the wind in a sepulchre; 

They did not know that a heathen book 
Had made me a monk for evermore! 



SUPREME UNCTION 

OUT of the eternal night, 
Rumours and murmurs infinite, 
Come to me where here I sit, 
Watching in silence where dead love lies, 
Pouring balm upon his closed eyes, 
Anointing him with memories. 
They are deep, the reservoirs of the night! 
They are deep, the wells of the infinite! 
And who can say but love may stir 
While I pour balm, while I pour myrrh; 
And rise like a flame and wander free 
Over the land, over the sea, 
And in the end come back to me? 



AQUESTION 117 



A QUESTION 

WHAT do I want of you? You fill 
The air about me with delight. 
A power stronger than my will 

Draws me towards you day and night. 
And yet I do not ask to press 
Even your hand in a caress. 

Your presence vague and nebulous 
Moves with me as I cross the street; 

Your sweetness like an angelus 

Makes holy ground beneath my feet. 

In every lovely form I pass 
You shape yourself as in a glass. 

What do I want of you? I see 
Your other lovers pine to drain 

The passion of your ecstasy 
In kisses desperate as rain, 

And yet, although I am not blind, 
Not to that harbour steers my mind. 

What do I want of you? God knows! 

I only know it is too high, 
Too rare a venture to disclose, 

Save to the vast and starless sky. 
Nothing I want, yet when we meet, 

I think the world hears my heart beat. 



Il8 EUTHANASIA 



EUTHANASIA 

OUT of a world of pain, 
In a trance that may well be death, 
I drift on a barge thro' the fields again 

Wherein I first drew breath. 
And the river cools my face 

And the river-scented flowers, 
Water-mint and tall loose-strife 

Bring me memories deep as life 
From all my vanished hours, 

And a white wraith-figure of you — 
White arms, white hands, white breast — 

Drifts by my side, and alone we two 
Drink of the river of rest. 

And the wind sighs in the reeds — 
Gently — a little wind — 

And lightly and sadly the gossamer-seeds 
Float away o'er the river-meads, 

Blown by that little wind, 
And cool airs touch our faces 

And your wraith-like hollow eyes 
Grow soft with the leafy places, 

And the low-breathed reedy sighs; 
And on and on we drift, 

Where the cattle stand in ranks, 
And the swallows flit and skim 

Over green and mossy banks; 
Till the willows droop like ghosts 

And the twilight fills the plain 



EUTHANASIA 119 

And the rooks in solemn hosts 

Gather and drift like rain. 
Then at last I feel and know 

That all my memories 
As they wavered and flickered in endless flow 

Were premonitions sent long ago 
Of nothing else than this! 

Than that I with you by my side, 
Wraith-like but lovely still, 

Should follow the river and drift and glide, 
Past forest and forest — past hill and hill; 

Till the river we follow grows one with the sea. 
Ah, the pain again — it will never be! 



120 A FAREWELL 



A FAREWELL 

LIFT not your head before you turn away! 
Let not your eyes grow tender, as they 
grew 
Long since — long since! Oh! it is hard to say 

How long, so cruel-fast that hour flew! 
Go, then, and take away with you the light 

Laughter of all the leaves, the pleasant stir 
Of all the rain falling on all the flowers; 

You cannot take away with you the night! 
That you must leave — Love's Holy Sepulchre; 
Whereat forlorn hope weeps thro' the dead hours. 

Go, then, and take with you the tender mist, 

That all these days has floated round the trees, 
And gathered in the glens and lightly kissed 

The willows quivering in the scarce- felt breeze; 
Take it with you and with it take along 

The vague sweet thoughts that into it I've 
poured, 
Glimpses and dreams, such as the gods afford, 

So rarely, that to earth they scarce belong. 
Take them with you! They are far better gone 

Than mirrored in my heart, as on a stone. 

Go quickly, with no word, if you must go; 

Nay, it is only pity in your eyes; 
Only sweet pity — and too well I know 

How soon that little mist will leave its skies! 



A FAREWELL 121 



Go quickly — for I would not cling to you 
With any desperate ultimate arrest, 

And it were hard, if you but raised your hand 
Not to lose all my pride upon your breast, 

Then, even now, the sea might drown the sand, 
Go quickly, oh my friend — adieu! adieu I 



122 THE GARDEN 



THE GARDEN 

WHERE the wet fields stretch away, away, 
And travellers never come, 
There is the land where my thoughts stray 
And the house I call my home. 

No house had ever so deep a moat, 

Or such tall reeds round it, and no man ever 
Heard such lamentable trees 

Whispering in the fatal breeze! 
Will the keel of that strange boat 

Lying under the lilies there, 
Lying in weeds like drowned girl's hair, 

Ever rise again and float? 
Never did the wandering wind 

Press its sad invisible face 
'Gainst such window-casements blind! 

Never did the night-hawk chase 
Thro' a sultrier, heavier night 

Moths so ghostly in their flight! 
Never did the wild swans fly 

Over such roofs of mystery! 
But do you think it is only of these 

Desperate, far-off, piteous, strange, 
That I dream, when you see my memory range? 

Do you think it is only of these? 
No! No! dear heart, if you had seen 

That inner garden with crumbling wall, 



THE GARDEN 123 

That garden where a dying queen 

Might listen all night to a ghost's foot-fall, 
If you had seen that old parterre 

Of roses red with forbidden passion 
You would know too well why I wander there, 

Too well why my dreams are out of fashion! 
Oh, their classic skies are blue and white. 

But grey upon grey is best; 
And to follow the rain is my delight 

And the wild swans in their long, long flight 
Into the night — into the night — 

To that garden of the West. 



124 MOMENTS 



NUNC DIMITTIS 

I AM dying; but what of that? 
Your hands are under my head, 
And your tears are on my cheek 
And I am happy at last — 
Bitter has been the pain! 
Yea I have paid the price 
For this last moment with you 
But all is well at the end; 
Your hands are under my head, 
And your tears are on my cheek. 
So you love me, after all! 
And I bless the eternal dark 
Into which I sink and fall 
That I 've found you — at the last. 



MOMENTS 

OH, there are moments in our life, 
When the dim marshes of the mind, 
Those livid swamps, where birds of strife 
Beat up against a sullen wind. 

Sink, drowned, in one tremendous flood, 
Full-brimmed, resistless, like the sea. 

I rose and praised God where I stood, 
When such a moment came to me! 



NOON 



NOON 



125 



OVER the hills and far away 
Are shadowy places where forests deep 
Cover with everlasting sleep 
Old dethroned gods of an earlier day, 

And sometimes when heavy on stone and sod, 
The noon-tide heat lies languid and dim, 

We feel the passing of such a god, 
And the hushed earth yearning to welcome him. 

Now — very now — do you feel it? — That breath 

Falling, rising, floating, drifting? 
What sudden immortal presence is this 

That the place and the hour witnesseth? 
It rustles the reeds of the meadow rills; 

The dreamy July grass it is lifting. 
Ah! You are pale. Did something kiss 

Your forehead that was sweet as death? 
"Look up to the hills" — the psalmist saith — 

Our help comes from beyond the hills! 

Oh friend, that can be no more than a friend; 

As you and others and all decide, 
See — the horizon has no end ! 

See — the doors of the world stand wide! 
They are wise, wise, gods, — I know it well — 
Wise and strong, that hold us apart; 

But this summer-noon has a different spell, 

Do you not feel it in your heart? 



126 NOON 

From over the hills and far away 
There has come some old forgotten god, 

Some old dethroned, unsceptered god, 
Caring nothing for their wise sway, 

And has joined us with a nod. 



LOST 127 



LOST 



THE purple waves recede, 
The wings of the sunset sink — 
Sea-birds, sea-foam, sea-weed 

Are lost on the world's brink, 
The flowing darkness covers the deep 
And I weep — and I weep! 

Oh, desperate memory! 

Oh, hopeless, bitter cry! 
She is dead who was all my life to me, 

And the wind goes heedless by! 

Lost! Lost! Lost! 

She can never hear me again! 
Under the tides of the sea she is tossed 

And her tangled hair drifts round her head 
And her tender eyelids are closed and dead. 

She can never hear me again! 

Can it be so? 

Can such things be, 
As the things that have been between her and me, 

And the waters flow on eternally? 

Better had neither of us been born! 

Oh darkness, darkness, do not stir, 
One word, only one word with her 

One little word, before the dawn! 



128 OBSESSION 



OBSESSION 

OH, take away those haunting eyes 
That come with the moonlight still, 
When the heavy clouds forsake the skies, 
And the rain goes over the hill. 

Oh, take away what that lovely hand 

On the wild sea-margin writ. 
Let the wind hide it in the sand 

And the sea roll over it! 

Oh, lost one, lost one, of whom I dreamed! 

On the long white road 'twas you 
Who always before me wavered and gleamed, 

Who always towards me turned and seemed 
The heart's desire come true. 

By lonely bridges where ancient floods 

Flowed towards lands unknown, 
'Twas you, O child of a thousand moods, 

Who waited for me alone! 

But now, oh now that you ' ve touched me and fled 

The long white roads grow cold; 
And the water at every bridge's head 

Flows darker than of old. 

Oh, take away those haunting eyes 

That come with the moonlight still. 
Let the heavy clouds cover the skies 

And the rain cover the hill! 



EXILES 129 



EXILES 



EXILES are we from our very birth, 
But strange memorial glimpses come 
At cross-roads of this alien earth, 
To trouble us with our true home. 

A grey tree by a forsaken way, 

A forest pool with a shadowy face — 

And we breathe deep a moment and say, 
"This is the place! This is the place!" 

What place? We shall never, never know! 

We shall die before our feet have found it. 
Yet by its borders all streams flow; 

And there's not a wind but blows around it! 

It is near, yet far — our natural home, 
That an evil magic has hidden aside; 

Leaving only tokens of it, that come 
To tantalize us and deride. 

Exiles are we from our very birth; 

And we shall die and be buried far 
From that wilder, lovelier, madder earth, 

Where the lost gods of our people are! 



130 MEMORY 



MEMORY 

OH, let me forget 
That ever the air was sweet 
With the breath of your flower-like ways, 
With your wistful, heart-breaking ways, 

And the music of your feet. 
Oh, let me forget 
That ever the air was warm 
With the glow of your youthful lips, 
With the rich soft bloom of your lips, 

And the magic of your form! 

Forget that body so white 

And that hair that slipped its bands, 
And the eyelids kissed by the perfumed night, 

And the pale and passionate hands. 

Forget — forget these things! 

For these things have an adder's tooth; 
And beauty like a scorpion stings, 

And cruel — ah, cruel is youth ! 

Let me feel on my forehead the wind 
That blows from the classic shore 

Where the wise and lonely shadows find 
Rest and need love no more! 

No more? If I'm to forget 

Your ways, your looks, your tones, 



NOTHING 131 



There must be no flowers by Lethe set, 
Or only scentless ones! 

Ah, God — the scent of a flower! 

All else the flesh can endure. 
But for that — in its hour — in its hour — 

There is no cure. 



NOTHING 

WILL my love come to me? 
Alas! I have no love. 
Though in green and rainy places 
The fronds of the ferns uncurl, 
And violets lift their faces 
To a crescent moon of pearl. 

Will my love come to me? 

Alas! I have no love. 
Far off — somewhere — a shining head — 
O sweet Lord Christ who canst raise the dead, 
Take my soul and give me my love instead! 

Will my love come to me? 
Alas! I have no love. 



132 WHITENESS 



WHITENESS 

WHITE roses set in ivory urns, 
White violets wreathed in silver cups; 
White marble founts whose moss and ferns, 
The shadow of the moon drink up. 

Since I have known you and your ways, 
Things such as these are my delights. 

A whiteness glimmers on my days, 
A whiteness hovers o'er my nights. 

White dews, white crescent moons, white dawns, 
White flickering feet, white-gleaming hands, 

White limbs that dream on twilight lawns, 
White limbs that dance on shimmering sands. 

O child, O maiden-acolyte, 

Whose censer breathes such silvery breath, 
Pour wine white as the flesh of Christ 

Upon the altar of white death! 

Then all red things shall fade away — 
Red flame, red roses, and red blood, 

And we shall voyage night and day 
The white sea of the tears of God. 



SILENCE I33 



SILENCE 



MY dear, that crying in the heart, 
When the summer's done, 
Hide it away, hide it apart, 

That none can hear it, none! 
If the wind and the owl and the cold raindrops 

Heard that crying that never stops, 
The crying of the daughters of men, 

They too would be silent — and what then? 

All would be silent then again! 

Silent the bird of woe — 
Silent the wind — silent the strain 

Of the rain-drops dropping slow. 
All would be silent and with one sigh 

A silent world would float on the sky. 
Worlds such as these, made of silent tears, 

They call the music of the spheres! 



134 FINIS 



FINIS 



SO it ends, my dream of loving! 
In this empty house I sit, 
With my tired spirit proving 

AH the cynics' bitter wit. 
Round me thro' the open shutters 
Floats the heavy-scented night; 
Not a leaf or grass-blade flutters; 
Vapours hide the moon from sight. 

Endless, boundless, high above me, 

Yawn the ghastly gulfs of space. 
I'd have looked, with her to love me, 

Those abysses in the face! 
All illusion! Well, what matter? 

Dim the lights — applaud the play! 
Fill the silence with our chatter. 

Lay the fairy masks away. 

Oh, deep night! My invocation 

Is to you, to you alone! 
Pour, pour down your consecration, 

Though the dream of love has flown. 
Large-enfolding night, receive me! 

Drown the treacherous siren-songs. 
Ah! the love that will not leave me, 

Night, to you alone belongs. 



THE GRAVE 135 



THE GRAVE 

WHAT are you thinking when so you look, 
Holding my hand with cold, cold fingers, 
As we watch this babbling summer brook 

Where the virginal flush of spring still lingers?" 

"Your eyes are vacant. They stare and stare. 

They seem not to see these blossoms white 
That drink the sun and perfume the air. 

They stare like a dead man's into the night." 

"I think of a white road crossing a hill, 
And a ruined church where no man passes, 

And a tombstone lying hushed and still 

And a north wind whispering thro' the grasses." 

"Is my body not warm to your touch, 
That you hold me so quietly on your knees? 

Look how the sunlight falls thro' the trees! 
Is love dead so soon? Is it always such?" 

"The white road crosses the barren hill; 

No blossoms are there, no bodies warm; 
Only a tombstone, very still, 

And one beneath it, a shrouded form." 

"Had she lips that were warm like mine? 

When I am dead a thousand lovers 
Will kiss the earth my body covers; 

And the splendid sun on my dust will shine. 



I36 THE GRAVE 



"Far, you say, is that ruined place? 

No man walks on that lonely road? 
Was it so beautiful, then, that face 

That is mingled now with the heavy mould?" 

"No! No! Not beautiful at all! 

Withered and wasted — what you will ! 
And the north wind blows thro' that ruined wall, 

And no man ever crosses that hill! 

"Yes, your thousand lovers will come. 

I believe it! And till the sea 
Drown in its flood her grassy tomb 

She will unremembered be!" 



THE RETURN 137 



THE RETURN 

WHAT can I give to you 
Who have given me everything? 
Can I rob the sky of its blue? 

Can I take the green from the spring? 
Can I catch the dew as it falls? 

Can I reach the fount of the rain? 
Can I snare the foam of the waterfalls 

And their rain-bow mist retain? 
Can I enter the tombs of kings 

And their cerements unbind? 
Can I steal the Tetrarch's rings 

And Salome's pearls unwind? 
Will Helen of Troy give up 

The bracelets from her wrist; 
Or Iseult restore the cup 

That Tristram drained and kissed? 
They are gone — they are gone, all these — 

And their names, like a small faint rain, 
Drift by without surcease 

Across time's grievous plain. 
Oh, lonely and classic face, 

My harbour and heathen heaven, 
Can I find nothing to replace 

All that to me you've given? 
Let these dim shades depart 
And their sad faint ghosts go hence. 
Out of my heart — my heart — 
I will give you your recompense! 



I38 TH E S H I P 



THE SHIP 

I MADE a ship of my cruelty, 
A wonderful, terrible ship, 
With masts of silver and ebony, 
And bulwarks of carven ivory, 
And a figure-head of chalcedony, 
And a prow like a lion's lip. 

And I sat in the stern of my ship, 

Alone, be it said and known, 
You are always alone in that kind of ship, 

Put your finger upon your lip! 
Christ's mother, how deep alone! 

And in my ship I sailed; 

And the waters were purple and green; 
And all day long the sea-gulls wailed 

And the sun went down and the waters paled 
And a phantom-moon was seen. 

And under the moon I still sailed on; 

But not only the moon was there! 
Algol, the Demon's Eye, looked down — 

Algol, the Eye of the Demon, shone, 
Thro' the chill and frozen air. 

Oh ship, my ship, called Cruelty! 
Is it forgotten then of thee 



THE SHIP 139 

How we came in the hour of dawn 
To a land where silence covered the sea, 

To a harbour of virginal mystery 
And a little pier forlorn? 

For the people fled away 

When they saw my terrible ship, 
Livid, phantom-like and grey, 

Led by Algol, at break of day, 
Into that harbour slip! 

But one fled not. One stood 

On the edge of the little pier, 
A boy — a boy in his solitude! 

A girl — a girl in her fear! 

No boy — no girl; a god, a god! 

And I hoisted the sails of my ship; 
And Cruelty, with Love on board, 

— Your finger on your lip! 
Went sailing, sailing over the sea 

Till the sun grew like the moon; 
Till the moon — oh, mother of mystery! 

Till the moon grew like the sun. 

And Algol, the Demon's Eye, looked down 

Upon that curious ship; 
Algol, the Eye of the Demon, shone — 

Your finger on your lip! 
But Love and I played a deeper game 

Than any Demons know, 



140 THE SHIP 

And my ship, my ship without a name, 

On the purple sea a silver flame, 
From Earth to Heaven did go. 

O Prince! make of your cruelty 

A ship and not a sword. 
Give it masts of silver and ebony! 

Give it bulwarks of carven ivory, 
And a figure-head of chalcedony; 

And take on board a god! 



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